Official: Obama wants to halve budget deficit

[kwame k]

WASHINGTON – Barack Obama wants to cut the federal deficit in half by the end of his first term, mostly by scaling back Iraq war spending, raising taxes on the wealthiest and streamlining government, an administration official said Saturday as the president worked to finalize his first budget request.

Obama's proposal for the 2010 fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 projects that the estimated $1.3 trillion deficit he has inherited from former President George W. Bush will be halved to $533 billion by 2013. That's a difference of 9.2 percent of the overall economy now vs. 3 percent in four years.

"We can't generate sustained growth without getting our deficits under control," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address that seemed to preview his intentions. He said his budget will be "sober in its assessments, honest in its accounting, and lays out in detail my strategy for investing in what we need, cutting what we don't, and restoring fiscal discipline."

He's expected to outline some broad themes of his budget request Monday at a White House summit on fiscal policy and touch on it during his first speech to Congress on Tuesday evening. He is slated to officially send at least a summary of it to Congress on Thursday, barely a week after his $787 billion economic stimulus plan becoming law.

Obama's budget also is expected to take steps toward his campaign promises of establishing universal health care and lessening the country's reliance on foreign oil.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the president has not yet released his budget, said Obama hopes to achieve his deficit-reduction goal by generating savings as he follows through on three core campaign promises over the next four years.

He has pledged to wind down the Iraq war by withdrawing most combat troops within 16 months of taking office. He also has said he would let the temporary Bush tax cuts expire in 2011 for people making more than $250,000 a year, effectively raising taxes on those people. And, he has vowed to scale back spending and improve government efficiency by eliminating programs that don't work.

The budget projections suggest that Obama hasn't backed off of any of those priorities, despite relatively little movement on them and at least one misstep in his first month in office as he concentrated on lobbying for the economic stimulus plan and rescuing the housing, auto and financial sectors.

Pentagon officials still are trying to determine exactly how to scale back the U.S. troop commitment in Iraq. The president's sweeping economic plan didn't include any of the tax increases Obama, as a candidate, had said he would impose on wealthy taxpayers. And, Nancy Killefer, his selection for a newly created position charged with eliminating inefficient government programs, withdrew amid personal tax issues.

Cutting the deficit by half in a mere four years is a lofty goal at any time, let alone in such dire economic circumstances. The question is whether Obama can do it while also turning around a recession now well into its second year.

Obama has pledged to make deficit-reduction a priority both as a candidate and a president. But he also has said economic recovery must come first.

In his first month in office, he has overseen enormous amounts of spending aimed at stabilizing the economy, reversing the recession and heading off even more turmoil.

Last week, he signed into law the $787 billion stimulus measure that is meant to create jobs but certainly will add to the nation's skyrocketing national debt. He also is implementing the $700 billion financial sector rescue passed on Bush's watch; about $75 billion of it is being used toward Obama's plan to help homeowners facing foreclosure. At the same time, the administration is weighing requests by General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC for an additional $21.6 billion. The ailing automakers already have received a combined $17.4 billion in federal loans.

Yet, even as he's spending a ton of taxpayer money, Obama also is pressing the need for getting "exploding deficits" under control.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that this year's budget deficit will be at least a record $1.2 trillion — about two times that of the year before. That total includes financial bailouts and rescue plans Congress approved since last Oct. 1, the start of the government's budget year, but not Obama's hefty stimulus package that's now law.

Some private economists are forecasting that the budget deficit for the current year will hit $1.6 trillion. And, the Treasury Department has said that the recession and massive costs for the $700 billion financial bailout have pushed the federal deficit to an all-time high for the first four months of the budget year.

Obama's budget director, Peter Orszag, told lawmakers recently that even after the economy recovers, annual deficits could reach $750 billion or so and steadily exceed $1 trillion by the end of the next decade. And, Obama himself has said, without decisive action, "trillion-dollar deficits will be a reality for years to come."


Link (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090221/ap_on_go_pr_wh/obama_budget)

[kwame k]

Obama's proposal for the 2010 fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 projects that the estimated $1.3 trillion deficit he has inherited from former President George W. Bush will be halved to $533 billion by 2013. That's a difference of 9.2 percent of the overall economy now vs. 3 percent in four years.

"We can't generate sustained growth without getting our deficits under control," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address that seemed to preview his intentions. He said his budget will be "sober in its assessments, honest in its accounting, and lays out in detail my strategy for investing in what we need, cutting what we don't, and restoring fiscal discipline."


This guy gets it.........

[GAR]

("This message is hidden because kwame k is on your ignore list.")

Hahaha~!! It WORKS it works.. yessss

[GAR]

I read the article previously, I know you'll cup Barack's nutsack in your lips about how cool this is to you, but it means absolutely nothing in the real world of politics.

He's a liar, he's fucking everything up, and he needs to be kicked out.

[hideyoursheep]

He's a liar, he's fucking everything up, and he needs to be kicked out.

Where were you the past 8 years?

[GAR]

Obama's 8 or Bush Jr's 8?

Because either question should be posed to the Republican Party who for the last century have been the default Good Cop in politics until Bush, yet both parties voted for his bullshit letting everybody down.

Now it looks like there's nothing left of Obama's promises he hasn't lied about yet, has it been a month yet?

[GAR]

I can only tell you that for 6 of the last 8 Obama years in history I've ignored, and the last 2 I've watched with fascination the entire country taken over like glossy eyed children to a saturday morning cereal commercial pitching chocolatey syrup and sugary shit with no substance.

Now that the empty calories give way to the bellyache of Change, people are upset. I'm not surprised.

[sadaist]

I'm going to wait to comment on this until later this week after his address to congress. But I will say this for him, he sure is keeping busy.

[Nickdfresh]

Obama's 8 or Bush Jr's 8?

Because either question should be posed to the Republican Party who for the last century have been the default Good Cop in politics until Bush, yet both parties voted for his bullshit letting everybody down.

Now it looks like there's nothing left of Obama's promises he hasn't lied about yet, has it been a month yet?

How are Republicans the "good cops" when they squandered their almost complete eight-year domination of the gov't and lost all credibility on any thing fiscal when they fucked their almost farcical grandstanding "Cuntract with America?" They had congress for much of Clinton's term and then failed by doing things, oh...like, putting pedophiles in charge of committees on "Missing and Exploited Children"...


There is very little that sums up the record of the U.S. Congress in the Bush years better than a half-mad boy-addict put in charge of a federal commission on child exploitation. After all, if a hairy-necked, raincoat-clad freak like Rep. Mark Foley can get himself named co-chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, one can only wonder: What the hell else is going on in the corridors of Capitol Hill these days?

These past six years were more than just the most shameful, corrupt and incompetent period in the history of the American legislative branch. These were the years when the U.S. parliament became a historical punch line, a political obscenity on par with the court of Nero or Caligula -- a stable of thieves and perverts who committed crimes rolling out of bed in the morning and did their very best to turn the mighty American empire into a debt-laden, despotic backwater, a Burkina Faso with cable.

To be sure, Congress has always been a kind of muddy ideological cemetery, a place where good ideas go to die in a maelstrom of bureaucratic hedging and rank favor-trading. Its whole history is one long love letter to sleaze, idiocy and pigheaded, glacial conservatism. That Congress exists mainly to misspend our money and snore its way through even the direst political crises is something we Americans understand instinctively. "There is no native criminal class except Congress," Mark Twain said -- a joke that still provokes a laugh of recognition a hundred years later.

But the 109th Congress is no mild departure from the norm, no slight deviation in an already-underwhelming history. No, this is nothing less than a historic shift in how our democracy is run. The Republicans who control this Congress are revolutionaries, and they have brought their revolutionary vision for the House and Senate quite unpleasantly to fruition. In the past six years they have castrated the political minority, abdicated their oversight responsibilities mandated by the Constitution, enacted a conscious policy of massive borrowing and unrestrained spending, and installed a host of semipermanent mechanisms for transferring legislative power to commercial interests. They aimed far lower than any other Congress has ever aimed, and they nailed their target.

--MATT TAIBBI
The Rest of "The Worst Congress Ever" here (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12055360/cover_story_time_to_go_inside_the_worst_congress_e ver)

Go to college GAR, then maybe you can acquire some basic critical thinking skills. A bonus would be that you would no longer have to worry about Mexican immigrants stealing your job...

[kwame k]

Watch it Nick, you keep talking like that to si-gar he might start a thread about getting you fired as a moderator. I've already been put on the dreaded ignore list, oh the horror! Which is ironic, considering he still posts in threads I start.........

Just watch yourself Nick...........si-gar is after you:hitch:

[Nickdfresh]

Watch it Nick, you keep talking like that to si-gar he might start a thread about getting you fired as a moderator. I've already been put on the dreaded ignore list, oh the horror! Which is ironic, considering he still posts in threads I start.........

Just watch yourself Nick...........si-gar is after you:hitch:


Or maybe GAyR will just quit, and start a big gay-pussy thread about it, like he did over Katydid...

http://www.rotharmy.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17192

Or maybe he'll give his password to the spirit of Jesterstar....

And then claim he was "just trolling" when he gets owned, like he usually does....

[Big Train]

WASHINGTON – Barack Obama wants to cut the federal deficit in half by the end of his first term, mostly by scaling back Iraq war spending, raising taxes on the wealthiest and streamlining government, an administration official said Saturday as the president worked to finalize his first budget request.

He has pledged to wind down the Iraq war by withdrawing most combat troops within 16 months of taking office. He also has said he would let the temporary Bush tax cuts expire in 2011 for people making more than $250,000 a year, effectively raising taxes on those people. And, he has vowed to scale back spending and improve government efficiency by eliminating programs that don't work.

Pentagon officials still are trying to determine exactly how to scale back the U.S. troop commitment in Iraq. The president's sweeping economic plan didn't include any of the tax increases Obama, as a candidate, had said he would impose on wealthy taxpayers. And, Nancy Killefer, his selection for a newly created position charged with eliminating inefficient government programs, withdrew amid personal tax issues.

In his first month in office, he has overseen enormous amounts of spending aimed at stabilizing the economy, reversing the recession and heading off even more turmoil.

Link (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090221/ap_on_go_pr_wh/obama_budget)

His assumptions are interesting.

Wind down the Iraq war, savings, I get it.

Taxing the rich (removing incentives to invest and create business in the US) even more? I understand people's gripes about the rich not paying enough, but they are more useful from a revenue standpoint by taxing them personally low if they are using that money to expand their businesses or investments. At this point, we should just focus on getting them to do that, not making them stash it elsewhere.

Cutting back programs? SURE. If they cut out the aid to other countries and citizens of other countries here, that would put a sizable dent in our deficit. By the same logic as some people use on the war (they should be defending us here), american money should be doing the same thing, helping our citizens first. If we can help others after, so be it.

I don't think it is a good political move for him, so I doubt he cuts too deep if at all. Most of his base has their pet programs and deep cuts (the kind that are needed), might cost him more in political capital than they are worth.

[Nickdfresh]

His assumptions are interesting.

Wind down the Iraq war, savings, I get it.

Taxing the rich (removing incentives to invest and create business in the US) even more? I understand people's gripes about the rich not paying enough, but they are more useful from a revenue standpoint by taxing them personally low if they are using that money to expand their businesses or investments. At this point, we should just focus on getting them to do that, not making them stash it elsewhere.

Well, you should know that if "the (nebulous) rich" do reinvest that money, they do get tax incentives...they, being the Investment class, have far more generous tax shelters than they've ever enjoyed and actually pay almost half the rate of the working class...



Cutting back programs? SURE. If they cut out the aid to other countries and citizens of other countries here, that would put a sizable dent in our deficit. By the same logic as some people use on the war (they should be defending us here), american money should be doing the same thing, helping our citizens first. If we can help others after, so be it.

Oh yes, the high school level economics "foreign aid" argument again. Well, feel free to tell us how much of the federal budget is comprised of foreign aid (minus Iraq of course)...

I agree money should be spent here, but I thought you objected to helping union scum...


I don't think it is a good political move for him, so I doubt he cuts too deep if at all. Most of his base has their pet programs and deep cuts (the kind that are needed), might cost him more in political capital than they are worth.

What pet programs?

[Big Train]

Well, you should know that if "the (nebulous) rich" do reinvest that money, they do get tax incentives...they, being the Investment class, have far more generous tax shelters than they've ever enjoyed and actually pay almost half the rate of the working class...

They get tax incentives, but their businesses will not show much in profit, which is the point of the exercise. The have the choice to invest worldwide, not just here. Those tax shelters are obviously not cutting, as recent history has shown.


Oh yes, the high school level economics "foreign aid" argument again. Well, feel free to tell us how much of the federal budget is comprised of foreign aid (minus Iraq of course)...

Well, it IS high school stuff Nick, not much more complex than that. While you while give me the equally high school response about how much overall (usually as compared to defense), the point remains the same. There are billions of dollars going to illegals and subsidies to other countries. Combine it with the saving Barry O is gonna pony up via the military and we should be almost there.

I agree money should be spent here, but I thought you objected to helping union scum...

Here we go again. You refuse to hear my point on unions fine. I don't object to a union WORKER making a living. High school arguments indeed...

What pet programs?

He is a liberal and much of his base would have to be considered the same. WHAT ISN'T a pet project or "core belief"? What "ineffective" program can he be referring to that isn't something his base would object to being cut (Education, housing, programs for the poor, the elderly, social security, Medicare, faith based programs, on an on). The only thing he can clearly cut with no objections from his base is the military and seems ready to do that. The programs he cuts will probably be replaced with an even costlier, less effective form that is just a high tech version.

[GAR]

But I will say this for him, he sure is keeping busy.

Yeah and between the Chicago cuntingency and the Banking Lobby that is worrisome.

.. and then Joe Biden is given oversight on the Spendulus Bill money - the perfect cookiejar crime with the perfect hand to do it with.

[GAR]

Cutting back programs? SURE.

Yeah, for example: why appoint a Car Czar for oversight on the Detroit Bailout money, when you can appoint a whole Car Czar TEAM?

If Obama's not doubling government, he'll be tripling it at this rate and selling off the autonomy of the government to the banks in the process.

You look back on history, and what the bankers try to get Government to do it's always the same issue: give them control so they can tip the apple cart again and again. I should know I worked for the bank and read all the reports I could.. so much energy about three things: lobby, lobbyists and lobbying.

[Nickdfresh]

Yeah, for example: why appoint a Car Czar for oversight on the Detroit Bailout money, when you can appoint a whole Car Czar TEAM?

If Obama's not doubling government, he'll be tripling it at this rate and selling off the autonomy of the government to the banks in the process.

You look back on history, and what the bankers try to get Government to do it's always the same issue: give them control so they can tip the apple cart again and again. I should know I worked for the bank and read all the reports I could.. so much energy about three things: lobby, lobbyists and lobbying.


Do you pull this shit out of your ass when you head emerges from there?

[Nickdfresh]

They get tax incentives, but their businesses will not show much in profit, which is the point of the exercise. The have the choice to invest worldwide, not just here. Those tax shelters are obviously not cutting, as recent history has shown.

Can you please use the quote function properly? It isn't that hard....

Um, how much do the wealthy need to stuff in their portfolios that can't already be reinvested? Lower their already pretty low tax structure will not do one bit of damn good as far as the economy and the lazy trust fund babies just continue to tie up a good deal of the wealth...


Well, it IS high school stuff Nick, not much more complex than that. While you while give me the equally high school response about how much overall (usually as compared to defense), the point remains the same. There are billions of dollars going to illegals and subsidies to other countries. Combine it with the saving Barry O is gonna pony up via the military and we should be almost there.

What point? That we spend less on foreign aid per capita than almost any other developed nation? Right! So, we can not send out money and watch our influence and markets diminish even more...


Here we go again. You refuse to hear my point on unions fine. I don't object to a union WORKER making a living. High school arguments indeed...


Your "points" were tantamount to "they all suck."



He is a liberal and much of his base would have to be considered the same. WHAT ISN'T a pet project or "core belief"? What "ineffective" program can he be referring to that isn't something his base would object to being cut (Education, housing, programs for the poor, the elderly, social security, Medicare, faith based programs, on an on). The only thing he can clearly cut with no objections from his base is the military and seems ready to do that. The programs he cuts will probably be replaced with an even costlier, less effective form that is just a high tech version.

He's shown himself to be very moderate and sure as hell is engaging the other side a lot more than the previous administration and has even kept several Republicans on board such as the Sec. of Defense, which I personally thought to be a very good call. The US military does need restructuring and our defense spending not only dwarfs the rest of the world, it pretty much dwarfs anything in the Federal budget...

We can't really cut programs for the poor and elderly, because a good deal of economic consumption is done by them and there are many arguments such as extending unemployment is actually a much better investment at getting dollars into the economy than cutting taxes is...

[bueno bob]

I read the article previously, I know you'll cup Barack's nutsack in your lips about how cool this is to you, but it means absolutely nothing in the real world of politics.

He's a liar, he's fucking everything up, and he needs to be kicked out.

Sounds to me like you're bitching because he hasn't fixed everything for you in twenty minutes.

Also sounds to me like you oughta wake the fuck up and quit thinking about the economy like a second grader does.

[bueno bob]

Yeah and between the Chicago cuntingency and the Banking Lobby that is worrisome.

.. and then Joe Biden is given oversight on the Spendulus Bill money - the perfect cookiejar crime with the perfect hand to do it with.

Were you so outraged when Cheney's ties and benefits reaped from the bullshit war in Iraq became publically visible?

[ELVIS]

Delete

[binnie]

I'm betting that Stephen Hawkins would like to moonwalk, but that ain't gonna happen either..........