The Low Hanging Fruit
Written by Brian Garst, Posted in Big Government, Waste & Government Reform
The great, fiscally responsible Barack Obama has finished scouring the $3.4 trillion budget line-by-line in search of waste, fraud and abuse. He announced completion of this task to the typical pomp and circumstance, acting the glorious hero returning from war despite finding a meager $17 billion worth of cuts. That’s 0.5% of the total budget, and just 4.25% of the increases Obama is already responsible for in the federal budget.
Far from a line-by-line, intensive search for failing government programs, this was nothing more than Obama sauntering up and plucking some low hanging fruit. Even then, the free spending democrats in Congress and their special interest supporters are already challenging the cuts.
A real return to fiscal sanity will require more than just symbolic cuts with one hand while the other is busy handing out record levels of new spending. Real cuts will mean standing up to the special interests groups, yet Obama has only demonstrated an ability to pander to them. I hold out no hope that Obama will stop playing pretend time with our budget and get down to real business.
I serve as Vice President of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a non-profit think tank dedicated to preserving tax competition and free markets. This site features my personal views, which are not reflective of CF&P.