A contradiction in terms!

In every news source today, there is a story on Obama's announcement to practice fiscal restraint while being a big spender. These two goals are mutually exclusive. At any rate, I could get this story from any number of places, I'm using the Fox News source simply because they got it posted to my RSS feed first. So, while I really like this statement from Obama: "To make the investments we need," he said at another point, "we'll have to scour our federal budget, line by line, and make meaningful cuts and sacrifices, as well, something I'll be discussing further tomorrow." I'd really like to see someone cut the federal budget significantly. However, this is what I'm afraid will really happen. Obama will not touch Medicare, Social Security or Welfare programs while at the same time creating and expanding his ill thought health program. In addition, he'll probably cut some of the military and then he'll start cutting all the smaller programs found in the budget. You can't cut the budget this way, at least not significantly, but this is what he'll do, I'd bet. He said he'd announce more details today, so we have to wait and see, but here goes what I expect to see.

First, let's examine this last budget. Where can Obama cut, really?



This graph is taken from Wikipedia and is attributed to one of its users, Skiddum. It is a graphical representation of where our money goes. So, where can Obama cut. Social Security was 21 percent of last year's budget and this number continues to grow annually, but he won't cut this. Medicare is more than 13 percent and Welfare is more than 11 percent, while Medicaid is 7.2 percent, totalling 31.7 percent. He won't cut these, in fact, he'd end up expanding these significantly if he tries to pass his health care plans. That's 52.7 percent of the budget right there. In addition, over 9 percent of the budget is the interest on our debt, which is surely to grow significantly now that we've indebted ourselves out the door with these bailouts. That put the total of "the stuff that can't be touched" at 62 percent. So, what can be touched? Technically, the discretionary spending can be touched. The above items are not discretionary, unless we vote them away, they MUST be paid. So, where can we cut? Obama has said in the past that he'd cut NASA. Well, would that save us anything, really? NASA only takes up .6 percent of the budget. During the golden age of NASA (travelling to the moon) their share of the budget was significantly higher. I suspect the only way to save money with NASA would be to privatize the whole thing and get the government out of the space business. While this may be feasible soon, I don't believe it is yet and it would cripple the local economies in the area where I live because of the huge impact that would have on Florida. But, Obama might be able to squeeze a few million out of NASA. Now, the departments of the Treasury, Interior, Labor and Transportation all make less than .5 percent of the budget each. You won't be able to cut there, probably not even a few million, so don't bother looking. The departments of Agriculture, Justice and Energy all take up less than 1 percent of the total budget, so again, maybe a couple million dollars, at most, but nothing significant. Now, we've dealth with more than half the government and how much of the budget is being spent? That's right, 4.4 percent of the total budget covers ALL of the stated discretionary items so far. 4.4 percent. Where are you going to cut Mr. Obama? Oh, some things actually get money spent on them? Okay, let's look at the items that actually get more than 1 percent of the budget spent on them:
Dept. of Homeland Security - 1.2%
Money given to states and international programs - 1.2%
Dept. of Housing and Urban Development - 1.2%
Off budget discretionary spending (stuff that shouldn't be being spent) - 1.3%
U.S. Dept. of Veteran's Affairs - 1.4%
"Other" on budget discretionary spending - 1.8%
U.S. Dept. of Education - 1.9%
Dept. of Health and Human Services - 2.4%
War on Terror - 5%
All of these items put together equal 17.4 percent of the budget. Now, you can actually save here. How? Well, you won't cut Homeland Security or aid to states and other countries and it would be bad PR to cut Veteran's Affairs. That leaves the war (easy to cut here, but not immediately), Health and Human Services (likely to get expanded with Obama's health plans, not cut), Dept. of Education (easily cut since it isn't constitutional anyway, but the student loan programs probably make up the majority of this, so you'd be able to cut, maybe a percentage point), "other" spending (this includes a LOT of tiny programs, many of which might be able to go away), off budget spending (this should just go away, period) and that's pretty much it. How much did I just save? Maybe 4 percent of the budget just got slashed. Oh wait, we still have military spending to discuss. This makes up over 16 percent of the budget. Can't cut this during wartime, so it isn't going anywhere this year, but perhaps there are ways we could cut in the future, maybe saving another 1 percent. I think that my total overall has now reached 5 percent of the budget. Guess what this means. The ONLY way to save money is to ignore discretionary spending and to cut cut cut cut cut the mandatory spending. This isn't going to happen under Obama, so don't hold your breath. In fact, even if he did cut 5-10 percent from discretionary spending, it would immediately be re-spent on his "new" programs. Don't expect fiscal restraint from this President.