Posted on 02/13/2011 8:30:09 AM PST by OldDeckHand
(Reuters) - President Barack Obama's proposed budget for fiscal 2012 will seek to cut the record federal deficit by $1.1 trillion over the next 10 years, White House budget director Jack Lew said Sunday.
Lew, speaking on CNN, said the president was also on track to halve the budget deficit by the end of his first term in office, which goes through 2012.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Cutting defense is one thing, which shouldn’t be done. Cutting the fraud and wasteful spending in supplies is something else.
Does this mean there wont be any money for new curtains in the gay barracks?
The Barry administration’s Cobell and Pigford free money giveaway programs need to be stopped and investigated. Obviously, discrimination did not occur because nobody at any government agencies went to jail for it.
In this order:
1. Obamacare has to go
2. Remove the drug “benefit” from medicare
3. Freeze all entitlement spending at current levels for 5 years.
4. Get rid of subsidy for ethanol.
5. Close departments of Education, Energy and the EPA.
That would be a nice start.
From each according to his ability to each according to his need.
To keep this in context and give you the proper perspective ... If they keep up the spending levels of the last two years, they will spend $42.5 trillion in then next 10 years. Dropping that by $1.1 trillion won’t mean squat
The problem is they are approaching the problem incorrectly. They are suggesting cuts... Which presupposes the existing spending levels.
To approach it properly, just like normal people, congress should look to what they bring in... $2 trillion... Subtract interest on existing debt to be paid in the current year... And that leaves you with what they can spend without increasing the debt.
Therefore, they would have about $1.8 trillion AT MOST to spend... Then they would have to justify/prioritize spending of that money.
Anything else will just result in more debt, which leads to the destruction the coutry (which I believe is their intention anyhow)
I think that item two on your list must be looked at carefully. There are people out there that have to take drugs that cost over $1000.00 a month. The cost of drugs has to come down. Not sure how this could be handled but many people can’t afford some of these drugs.
Military budget is about $700 Billion a year.
Cutting $78B in 5 years is about $16B a year.
So $16B out $700b is the yearly cut in an era when unlimited money is gone. Now, are at least $16b lost to fraud and incompetence on a 700B budget? Probably even $70billion.
From 15 trillion subtract 1 trillion. OK only 14 trillion.
Yours is a great post! This is the bottom line, the political will does not exist to do what you have described. Therefore plan you life based upon the fact that at some point the USD will be rejected for payment, probably from oil exporters or the Chinese. At this moment you will have about 30 seconds to react to “save” any paper wealth you have accumulated.
It seems the banksters on Wall Street have the big Red panic button already programmed into their computers, so the chance that you can save anything is very unlikely.
When this happens it will make the 1929 and 1987 market crashes look like noise.
This is not an ad to by gold, but prepare accordingly.
schu
The Republicans have to shoulder there share of the blame, in this regard. They passed a prescription drug benefit (read: entitlement), which was a colossal mistake. But, they then compounded that mistake by prohibiting Medicare from negotiating the best price possible. Unfortunately, other countries who are also customers of those same drug companies, negotiate fiercely with them, driving the price down significantly. The result? American taxpayers end up subsidizing the purchase of drugs from American drug makers. It's insane.
As I understand Obamacare, similar constraints were placed on the the so-called public cooperatives that will provide insurance to the uninsurable. This was a deal that was struck with the Big Pharma to gain their support. As a result, American taxpayers will subsidize an increasing share of the foreign drug purchases.
I'm not normally a guy that reflexively blasts industry lobbies. But in this case, Big Pharma is big-time screwing the American taxpayer. Big Time.
By the way, it's telling that a media that LOVES it some horror stories about business ripping off government (look at all the gotcha defense industry stories that get produced every year), completely ignore this story. Why? Look at your nightly news casts. Every commercial break is one drug commercial after another. Big Pharma has literally bought and paid for a compliant Big Media.
Looks like the newly elected congress IS having an effect.
Perhaps so but kindly point me to that section of the Constitution that says the government is responsible for anyone’s health care?
If so, means test it then and by means I don’t wish to use the income level as the qualifier. In effect what these “programs” do is insure that individuals will receive a tax supported estate. Were one to have to depleat their assets before going on the government dole, there would be no estate.
I own stock in one of these high cost drug companies...their monthly drug cost is more than $5K yet they have a system to furnish drugs to the destitute and uninsured. Of course, their prime mission is to get this drug onto the government formulary which they have been successful at so there are few who qualify for very reduced cost drugs.
Perhaps the way to go is for the G to underwrite most of the development costs of these companies and to remove the onus of being sued if their drugs are found to not work as well as believed in an effort to get the costs down. These are avenues that should be looked at but merely passing high costs onto the taxpayers is not in my mind the way to go.
He’s going to cut it from the baseline, no doubt. In other words, he’s not going to cut it. He’s going to not increase it as much as he’d first planned.
“Looks like the newly elected congress IS having an effect.”
Or Obama wants to get re-elected. Bill Clinton did the same
As a guy who served in uniform for 25+ years, with several tours in the Pentagon, I'm confident that $70B annually could be cut, without much impact on operational capabilities. BUT, that would require some real (and painful) reform in a whole hose of areas, not the least of which is the procurement process.
If DoD procurement was fractionally as competent as Walmart is in their procurement processes, we could save $70B in our sleep.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.