No Wonder President Faces “Confidence Gap” on Spending
When President Barack Obama ordered his Cabinet to find ways to cut spending by $100 million (as point of reference*, that’s about .01% of his “stimulus”), he told reporters, “We also have a deficit — a confidence gap — when it comes to the American people. . . . And we’ve got to earn their trust.“
Mr. President, if you’d just compare your campaign rhetoric to your budgets, you might better understand why that gap exists. Let me remind you of your words during the campaign when you made your case to the American people why you were the one to lead us:
But there is no doubt that we’ve been living beyond our means and we’re going to have to make some adjustments.
Now, what I’ve done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut.
Now, let’s look at how, with your budgets, we’ll live ever further beyond our means than we ever did in the Bush era:
(Created by Washington Post via Heritage Foundation.)
Mr. President, if you want to close that “confidence gap,” cut those deficits back. And you can do that be delivering on your campaign promise of a “net spending cut.”
UPDATE: Others provide additional points of reference: “Obama’s latest budget-tightening effort hardly makes a dime’s worth of difference.” In a post which blogger Teh Resistance calls, a “brilliant way to put it,” economist Greg Mankiw puts that $100 million into perspective:
. . . imagine that the head of a household with annual spending of $100,000 called everyone in the family together to deal with a $34,000 budget shortfall. How much would he or she announce that spending had be cut? By $3 over the course of the year–approximately the cost of one latte at Starbucks.
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Beautifully succinct, GPW.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — April 20, 2009 @ 4:05 pm - April 20, 2009
Here’s a comparison: Someone who is already $100,000 in debt, will borrow another $17,000 over the next year, but has cut $1 from their annual budget. Not exactly my definition of “fiscal responsibility.”
Comment by Pink Elephant — April 20, 2009 @ 4:18 pm - April 20, 2009
ROFLMAO. Obama can not be this clueless or does he and his admin think we the Americian people are that stupid?
either way ithis will ensure that the next tea parties are bigger and louder…
Comment by unseen — April 20, 2009 @ 6:30 pm - April 20, 2009
The sad thing as that it might just work and I have no doubt that Axelrod already has the focus group data to prove it.
People who don’t follow these things will hear that he’s “cutting out the fat” and feel great about it. Responsible folk will sputter on about percentages and sound like sour grapes.
The silver lining, I think, is that he would never have gone down this route if the Tea Parties hadn’t scared him. We seem to have struck a nerve…
Comment by MFS — April 20, 2009 @ 6:30 pm - April 20, 2009
Since even the MSM is reporting that $100M is a drop in the bucket, I expect Team Obama to come up with some other razzle dazzle to make us forget about this.
On a related note, FBI puts animal rights activist on Domestic Terrorist list. This sounds like some CYA after Nappy’s Enemies List blew up in their faces.
Comment by V the K — April 21, 2009 @ 7:36 am - April 21, 2009