Taxpayers Deserve Better from the President
President Obama’s estimated $17 billion budget cuts for fiscal year 2010 amounts to a measly .5 percent of the president’s total proposed spending, and 1.5 percent of the president’s proposed deficit for the coming fiscal year. His offerings to cut the budget should be dismissed as unserious. In fact, this is reminiscent of the Bush administration’s annual list of minuscule proposed cuts in the face of profligate spending and mounting federal debt.
President Obama says his efforts “are just the next phase of a larger and longer effort needed to change how Washington does business and put our fiscal house in order.” Promising more spending and more debt while celebrating relatively insignificant cuts and ignoring the looming entitlement crunch represents businesses as usual, not change. Current and future taxpayers deserved a serious proposal to reduce the government’s burden on their wallets and the struggling economy. Instead, the president’s first budget represents an attempt to shove the government’s hand deeper into the American peoples’ pockets and lives.
The president made several questionable statements in his address earlier today. He promised “long overdue investments” in education. But federal spending on education has already increased dramatically with no positive results. He spoke of “undertaking health care reform so that we can control costs while boosting coverage and quality” and “investing in renewable sources of energy.” Yet we know any type of reform will mean higher taxes, government rationing, and slower economic growth.
Congressional Priorities and the FY2010 Budget Resolution
Yesterday the House and Senate passed a bloated $3.5 trillion budget blueprint for fiscal year 2010. According to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), “What is important to us as a nation is reflected in this budget. It’s a very happy day for our country.”
Included in the blueprint is language that calls for an equal pay raise between military employees and civilian federal employees. President Obama had originally proposed slightly higher pay for members of the armed services. The exact pay raise for bureaucrats will be determined in the appropriations process, but it’s likely to be a hike of anywhere from 2.9% to 3.9%. This would come on top of last year’s 3.9% raise.
Omitted from the blueprint was language included in the Senate version by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) that would have “required agency managers to report to Congress within 90 days of the bill’s passage on any programs that are ‘duplicative, inefficient or failing, with recommendations for eliminating and consolidating these programs.’” A simple report to be issued by the agencies themselves. That’s it. There would be no guarantee that anything would actually be cut or consolidated.
Is it really a happy day for our country when Congress passes a blueprint to add another $1 trillion plus to the skyrocketing national debt? Is it really good for the struggling economy that the parasitic bureaucrats already living comfortably at the expense of the productive members of society are going to get another fat pay raise? Is it really “important to us as a nation” to make sure federal agencies are not instructed to pick out the particularly woeful programs under their watch?
It may be a happy day for politicians and bureaucrats, but it’s another kick in the teeth for taxpayers.
Federal Debt Per Household
This afternoon, a congressional office asked me what the estimated national debt in President Obama’s fiscal year 2010 budget submission would be on a per-U.S.-household basis. I think the answer is worth sharing with C@L readers:
According to the president’s budget, the estimated national debt (debt held by the public) in fiscal year 2010 would equal approximately $81,000 per U.S. household.
But no worries, “we owe it to ourselves“!
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