Obama's Trims: one-half of 1 percent of the $3.4 trillion budget

Well Obama promised to trim excess off of federal budget and he did.... as the title says, he trimmed "one-half of 1 percent of the $3.4 trillion budget," which adds up to $17 billion.

Then he pumped that right back into domestic programs.

Via AP:

Obama's promised line-by-line scrub of the federal budget has produced a roster of 121 budget cuts totaling $17 billion — or about one-half of 1 percent of the $3.4 trillion budget Congress has approved for next year. The details were unveiled Thursday.

White House budget director Peter Orszag said the president's plan for program cuts is just a start and that a lot more needs to be done to dig the government out of its fiscal hole, especially curbing the growth of the Medicare and Medicaid health care programs for the elderly and the poor.

"But $17 billion a year is not chump change by anyone's accounting," he said.

Those savings are far exceeded by a phone-book-sized volume detailing Obama's generous increases for domestic programs that will accompany the call for cuts. And instead of devoting the savings to defray record deficits, the White House is funneling them back into other programs.

Of course, as Wapo explains, many of these cuts have been tried before and didn't go over so well with Congress.

Of course administration officials are defending this by saying they will continue to look for more "line by line" items for additional cuts.. I wonder what programs that "saved" money will be pumped back into?

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