Boston Globe - ?5 hours ago? AP And Globe Staff / April 21, 2009 Convening his first Cabinet meeting yesterday, President Obama ordered his agency chiefs to join many American families in penny-pinching, but acknowledged that slicing at least $100 million in administrative costs ...
President Obama has asked his cabinet to come up with 100 million in savings over a 90 day period. This sure sounds good on the surface, until you realize our budget is running around 200 billion per month or 600 billion in 90 days. If this is broken down to be understandable to most of us, it looks like this: 600,000,000,000/100,000,000 To put it another way it amounts to one dollar in savings for every six thousand spent.
Wow, I feel better already!
President Obama promised the country a sharp knife in dealing with the budget, but it seems like he got the butter knife out instead.
"To put those numbers in perspective, imagine that the head of a household with annual spending of $100,000 called everyone in the family together to deal with a $34,000 budget shortfall," Harvard University economist N. Greg Mankiw, a Bush administration official, wrote on his blog. "How much would he or she announce that spending [be] cut? By $3 over the course of the year -- approximately the cost of one latte at Starbucks. The other $33,997? We can put that on the family credit card and worry about it next year."
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the
government from wasting the labors of the people under
the pretense of taking care of them.
Thomas Jefferson
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