American Morning
Obama’s $100 Million Test
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/04/23/art_avlon_cnn.jpg caption="John Avlon was director of speechwriting and deputy director of policy for Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign."]
By John Avlon
The Daily Beast
After last week’s tea party tax protests, President Obama acknowledged “a confidence gap, when it comes to the American people. And we’ve got to earn their trust.”
Democrats have been slapped with the tax and spend liberal label for decades – and candidate Obama spent much time on the campaign trail trying to distance himself from that legacy. “When I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely,” he promised, offering assurance to the moderate majority of Americans that his would be an administration dedicated to fiscal responsibility.
Of course, all that was before the fiscal crisis and neo-Keynisan Kool-Aid started to be passed around Capitol Hill, with congressmen chugging it by the billions as the deficit ballooned.
This week, President Obama tried to square his young administration’s record with his campaign rhetoric by announcing a commitment to cut $100 million dollars in wasteful spending at his first cabinet meeting.
About this Show
Welcome to the American Morning blog where you can get daily news updates from American Morning's reporters and producers. Join us for "the most news in the morning," weekdays from 6-9 a.m. ET, only on CNN.
Sounds like the media believed Obama when he said he would use the line by line veto power. Well, as all can see he lied again !!! Our great Governor of Louisiana used his line by line veto power with great results for the people of Louisiana. It is past time that all pork barrel spending stops, at least until the economy improves 1000%. There should NOT be any new spending programs and many old spending programs need to stop. Programs like rewarding wellfare recepiants for having babies, UN-earned tax credit, SSI, medicaid and others must be stopped !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
With regard to the President’s $100 million challenge, Mr. Obama stated that his intent was not to actually cut this spending but to ensure that "the taxpayers’ dollars are spent wisely". Further, the President went on to say that the money "saved" could be spent on programs like healthcare. This is not cutting spending or a demonstration of fiscal responsibility. There are also several other areas of concern that “we the people” need to take heed of.
Let us make an attempt to focus on the real issues we are faced with as American citizens. Please, do not take these points as a defense of the Bush policies as I have written critically about those as well.
1) Transparency in fiscal governance was promised by Mr. Obama and has, thus far, not been delivered. I have fully read every spending bill presented by the Obama administration and the Congress. The “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act”, better known as the “stimulus package” is nothing of the sort. It is a pure appropriations bill and contains no performance goals, ROI/ROC or definitions for what success will/should look like.
2) The website [www.recovery.gov] established for citizens to “track every penny” of this spending does nothing of the sort. It is an ambiguous menagerie of pluralisms and political rhetoric. It is, however, a great marketing ploy.
3) The bailout spending under TARP (initiated in the previous administration) is a tremendous failure and every American should be outraged at the way our government has misused our money and abused their power. AIG has received $150 billion with another 25 institutions receiving between $1 and $35 billion. If anyone would like to discuss the economic implications of this, please let me know as they are too complex for this posting. My research points to a ripple effect that will result in long term weakness in consumer net worth.
4) The $3.6 trillion budget proposed by the Obama administration is an extremely dangerous proposition for America. This is not a partisan issue; rather, it is a mathematical reality. Candidate Obama promised to reduce the deficit (not to be confused with the national debt) by 50%. Under the proposed budget, President Obama would be breaking that promise by a factor of ~8 in fiscal 2009 (source CBO), resulting in a $1.8 trillion deficit (opposed to $459 billion in 2008). This deficit is forecast to total $9.27 trillion in the decade to come. Do the research and you will find that the President has not been truthful in his presentation of this to the public.
5) On matters of foreign policy, the President has been inconsistent between words and deeds. At the same time Mr. Obama is proposing significant cuts in defense spending, he is also claiming to support our military. Mr. Obama has called Israel our “greatest ally” in the Middle East but opens invitations to Tehran for dialogue without precondition. The release of classified memos on interrogation techniques used post 9/11 is in stark contrast to his proclamation of “looking ahead”. There are many other examples of duplicitous foreign policy comments and actions that I would be happy to go into for those interested.
The bottom line is that we Americans need to stop being partisan amongst ourselves long enough to see what is happening right before our eyes. This did not start with Obama nor will it end with him so long as we leave our Country in the hands of self-serving politicians as opposed to statesman. We need to embrace new parties and term limits for Congress. We must act together as Americans for as long as we stand divided, and we are divided, the corrupted version of our Union embodied by our elected officials will continue to stay in power by polarizing the populous.
WE THE PEOPLE OF THE KEYSTONE STATE DO NOT HAVE HAVE CONFIDENCE GOVERMENT IN WASHINGTO DC WE NEED TO FOLLOW TEXAS DC is only helping big bussines and big banks. To keep there campain money rolling in . Not to only letting big trucking companies like Swift Transportion SMUGGLING DRUGS again keeping campain money rolling in KILLING the little guy