Obama -- Cut $100 million out of your budgets

Barry must think that Americans are idiots if he thinks this is going to quell the public's outrage at the size, scope, and speed with which the government is growing. And if he thinks this is going to shut us up, he's got another thing coming because $100 million is a drop in the bucket when you're talking about trillion dollar deficits:

President Obama plans to convene his Cabinet for the first time today, and he will order its members to identify a combined $100 million in budget cuts over the next 90 days, according to a senior administration official.

Although the budget cuts would amount to a minuscule portion of federal spending, they are intended to signal the president's determination to cut spending and reform government, the official said.

Obama's order comes as he is under increasing pressure to show momentum toward his goal of eventually reducing the federal deficit, even as he goes about increasing spending in the short run to prop up the economy and support his priorities.

Earlier this month, both chambers of Congress passed Obama's $3.5 trillion budget outline for 2010, which includes unprecedented new investments in health care, education and energy. But the huge budget, which contemplates a $1.2 trillion deficit, has drawn the ire of small-government conservatives, who say that such high deficits jeopardize the nation's economic future.

Last week, conservative activists organized "tea parties" to protest Obama's budget, which House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) says "spends too much, taxes too much, and borrows too much from our children and grandchildren."

$100 million is chump change, folks. It really is. The CBO has projected deficits that will run close to $8 trillion by the end of Barry's first (and hopefully only) term. And he throws this out there like it's red meat to fiscally-minded citizens. If he had been serious about that, he never would have adopted the FDR style of spending money to get out of a recession.

And remember the meme he offered during the campaign about transparency? The WaPo picks up on that meme from Axelrod on the talking heads shows yesterday:

The Obama administration is moving closer to releasing some results of the "stress tests" aimed at projecting how the nation's 19 largest banks would withstand further deterioration in the economic condition.

"We're confident that, yes, some are going to have very serious problems, but we feel that the tools are available to address these problems," Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said yesterday on CBS's "Face the Nation."

The administration plans to release guidelines for the stress tests this week, and it hopes to make results available in early May. "It's important that there is disclosure," Axelrod said. "And I think the banks are going to want that because they're going to want the markets and the country and the world to know exactly what their condition is."

Disclosure, David? Where was the disclosure of all the earmarks in the $410 billion omnibus bill passed back in early March? What about the disclosure of the $787 billion bailout bill passed immediately after your boy was inaugurated? This administration is anything but transparent, open, or honest with the American people. And you guys are the fools if you think this paltry scrap thrown to the masses ticked off at you for putting future generations in hock.

Publius II