Obama set to suggest $17B in cuts
WASHINGTON -- President Obama will propose $17 billion in spending cuts today, less than half of 1% of his budget, including cuts in weapons systems already announced, according to two senior White House officials familiar with the plans.
The programs that would be reduced or eliminated would require approval by Congress. In all, 121 programs would be affected, said the officials, who briefed reporters in a conference call but refused to be identified ahead of Obama's official announcement.
The programs Obama will try to shrink or eliminate vary from a long-range radio navigation system made obsolete by the Global Positioning System to the Even Start early childhood education program, the officials said. Those programs will have defenders in Congress and across the country that will make it hard for him to get the desired savings.
Although most of the proposed reductions are new, the number and estimated savings are similar to the Bush administration's annual efforts the past four years. It proposed $12 billion to $18 billion in cuts each year, but the most Congress ever approved was $6.5 billion in 2005, when Republicans were in control. During the next two years, the savings fell to $2 billion or less.
For those three years, Congress eliminated 91 programs and reduced 71 others for a total of $10.1 billion — barely 0.1% of federal spending during that time.
Obama's proposed cuts are about one-fiftieth the size of this year's $787 billion economic stimulus package — all of which was added to the deficit. The overall budget is $3.6 trillion.
President George W. Bush's last budget director, Jim Nussle, says Obama's heavy spending thus far makes his efforts to cut waste and inefficiency "less credible from a political standpoint." And Congress, Nussle says, is never inclined to go along because of parochial interests.
"Every time you go through this process, you learn who holds the checkbook," Nussle says.
Obama's message will be similar to his predecessor's: With the government running huge deficits, programs that aren't working or are duplicative can't be continued. "So much of our government was built to deal with different challenges from a different era," he said late last month. "Too often, the result is wasteful spending, bloated programs and inefficient results."
