Archive for the ‘Government Waste’ Category

DAILY CALLER: It’s been just a few hours since President Barack Obama has finished his budget address at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and there already been significant pushback from the right.

First, Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan lashed out at Obama and shared his disappointment in a press conference earlier today. However, Fox News contributor and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer took it to the next step on Wednesday’s broadcast of “Special Report” and criticized the speech as being focused on politics and not policy.

“I thought it was a disgrace,” he said. “I rarely heard a speech by a president so shallow, so hyper-partisan and so intellectually dishonest, outside the last couple of weeks of a presidential election where you are allowed to call your opponent anything short of a traitor. But, we’re a year-and-a-half away from Election Day and it was supposed to be a speech about policy. He didn’t even get to his own alternative until more than halfway through the speech. And when he did, he threw out numbers suspended in mid-air with nothing under them with all kinds of goals and guidelines and triggers that mean nothing. The speech was really about and entirely an attack on the [Rep. Paul] Ryan plan.”

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Boehner’s a nice man with a tan and pink tie, but he was totally outwitted and outfoxed by Obama.

NATIONAL JOURNAL: A Congressional Budget Office analysis of the fiscal 2011 spending deal that Congress will vote on Thursday concludes that it would cut spending this year by less than one-tenth of what both Republicans or Democrats have claimed.

A comparison prepared by the CBO shows that the omnibus spending bill, advertised as containing some $38.5 billion in cuts, will only reduce federal outlays by $352 million below 2010 spending rates. The nonpartisan budget agency also projects that total outlays are actually some $3.3 billion more than in 2010, if emergency spending is included in the total.

The astonishing result, according to CBO, is the result of several factors: increases in spending, especially at the Defense Department; decisions to draw over half of the savings from recissions; and cuts to reserve funds and and money for mandatory-spending programs that might never have been spent.

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Budget deal axes Obama ‘czars’ . . . who have already been axed.

ASSOCIATED PRESS: The [so-called] historic $38 billion in budget cuts resulting from at-times hostile bargaining between Congress and the Obama White House were accomplished in large part by pruning money left over from previous years, using accounting sleight of hand and going after programs President Barack Obama had targeted anyway.

Such moves permitted Obama to save favorite programs – Pell grants for poor college students, health research and “Race to the Top” aid for public schools, among others – from Republican knives, according to new details of the legislation released Tuesday morning.

And big holes in foreign aid and Environmental Protection Agency accounts were patched in large part. Republicans also gave up politically treacherous cuts to the Agriculture Department’s food inspection program.

The details of the agreement reached late Friday night just ahead of a deadline for a partial government shutdown reveal a lot of one-time savings and cuts that officially “score” as cuts to pay for spending elsewhere, but often have little to no actual impact on the deficit.

As a result of the legerdemain, Obama was able to reverse many of the cuts passed by House Republicans in February when the chamber approved a bill slashing this year’s budget by more than $60 billion. In doing so, the White House protected favorites like the Head Start early learning program, while maintaining the maximum Pell grant of $5,550 and funding for Obama’s “Race to the Top” initiative that provides grants to better-performing schools.

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So Mark Levin was right with his first take on the Budget Deal — calling it an ‘historic scam’

Mark Levin is calling the the John Boehner, Barrack Obama, Harry Reid budget deal an ‘historic scam.” Says there aren’t $38 Billion in cuts in spending between now and the end of the year.

Karl Rove is calling it a $78 Billion cut because it’s $78 Billion less than Obama wanted. So if Obama wants $200 Billion more in spending, and we only give him $100 Billion more, is that a $100 Billion cut?

By Rove’s logic, it is.

Levin is right. The more we look at this budget deal, the more it looks like an “historic scam.”

AFP: The US budget deficit shot up 15.7 percent in the first six months of fiscal 2011, the Treasury Department said Wednesday as political knives were being sharpened for a new budget battle.

The Treasury reported a deficit of $829 billion for the October-March period, compared with $717 billion a year earlier, as revenue rose a sluggish 6.9 percent as the economic recovery slowly gained pace.

The Treasury argued that the pace of increase in the deficit was deceptive because of large one-off reductions in expenditures made during the first half of fiscal 2010, compared with previous and subsequent periods.

Those included a $115 billion reduction in funds spent on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) — the financial institution bailout program — in March 2010.

But 2011 so far has also seen significant increases in spending on defense, Social Security, health and debt service, while receipts have not grown as fast.

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Mark Levin is calling the the John Boehner, Barrack Obama, Harry Reid budget deal an ‘historic scam.” Says there aren’t $38 Billion in cuts in spending between now and the end of the year.

Karl Rove is calling it a $78 Billion cut because it’s $78 Billion less than Obama wanted. So if Obama wants $200 Billion more in spending, and we only give him $100 Billion more, is that a $100 Billion cut?

By Rove’s logic, it is.

Levin is right. The more we look at this budget deal, the more it looks like an “historic scam.”

Are you having trouble affording swanky vacations in luxurious destinations in this tough economy?

If so, you must not be a resident of California on welfare.

In California, welfare recipients get an ATM cash card from the government that they can use anywhere for any purpose — including for fancy vacations and even to buy casino gambling chips in Las Vegas.

Some even stay at aFour Seasons luxury hotel, dine at four-star restaurants, and lounge on sun-dappled cruise ships while the rest of America struggles to make ends meet.

Americans for Prosperity has performed a wonderful public service with this video.

CNS: House Budget Chairman Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said President Barack Obama’s budget strategy is to “do nothing, punt, duck, kick the can down the road” while the debt remains on track to eventually hit 800 percent of GDP. Ryan added that the CBO is saying it “can’t conceive of any way” that the economy can continue past 2037 given its current trajectory.

Ryan also said that the House Republicans’ FY2012 budget, which he unveiled yesterday, would save Medicare and help the United States avoid a debt crisis.

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DAILY CALLER: the big day for Amtrak’s Wilmington train station. It is being renamed in honor of Vice President and former Delaware Senator Joe Biden following major renovations made possible with stimulus funds.

One problem: the CEO of Amtrak got stuck on the train.

ABC News Deputy Political Director & Political Reporter Michael Falcone tweeted at approximately 10 a.m. that the Acela train he was riding had been “delayed” in Baltimore and that he was sitting next to Amtrak CEO Joe Boardman.

Falcone tweeted, “Acela to NY delayed for ‘unknown period’ Should I feel better that the Amtrak CEO is sitting next to me?”

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WASHINGTON TIMES: As a thank-you to its most famous customer, Amtrak is renaming the train station in Wilmington, Del., after stimulus “sheriff” Vice President Joseph R. Biden – after the project received $20 million in stimulus money and came in $5.7 million over the initial announced budget.

Spokesmen for Mr. Biden, who said he personally fought for stimulus money for Amtrak, didn’t respond to messages Wednesday or Thursday.

But Amtrak said it alone made the decision to rename the station in honor of the vice president. The company also said its own budget projection was always greater than the $32 million the White House announced back in 2009 – though Amtrak itself also listed the $32 million cost that year, later raising the price tag to $37.7 million.

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Bigger than Bush’s deficit for all of 2007

WASHINGTON TIMES: The federal government posted its largest monthly deficit in history in February at $223 billion, according to preliminary numbers the Congressional Budget Office released Monday morning.

That figure tops last February’s record of $220.9 billion, and marks the 29th straight month the government has run in the red — a modern record. The last time the federal government posted even a monthly surplus was September 2008, just before the financial collapse.

Last month’s federal deficit is nearly four times as large as the spending cuts House Republicans have passed in their spending bill, and is more than 30 times the size of Senate Democrats’ opening bid of $6 billion.

Senators are slated to vote this week on those two proposals — both of which are expected to fail — and then all sides will go back to the negotiating table to try to work out a final deal.

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FLASHBACK: Bush’s deficit for all of 2007 was $161 Billion >>>

I was certainly no fan of the Bush budgets.  I thought then that he was spending America into ruin.  I roundly criticized him for his spending.  But wouldn’t we love to have the Bush deficits today?

At least Bush was not trying to destroy the country on purpose.