Obama sends Congress $3.73 trillion budget

[Jolie Rouge]

MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer Martin Crutsinger, Ap Economics Writer – 2 hrs 16 mins ago
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama sent Congress a $3.73 trillion budget Monday that holds out the prospect of eventually bringing deficits under control through spending cuts and tax increases. But the fiscal blueprint largely ignores his own deficit commission's view that the nation is imperiled unless huge entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare are slashed.

Obama called his new budget one of "tough choices and sacrifices," but most of those cuts would be held off until after the next presidential election.

Overall, Obama proposed trimming the deficits by $1.1 trillion over a decade. The administration is projecting that the deficit will hit an all-time high of $1.65 trillion this year and then drop sharply to $1.1 trillion in 2012, with an expected improvement in the economy and as reductions in Social Security withholding and business taxes expire.

Obama's 2012 budget would actually add $8 billion to the projected deficit for that year because the bulk of the savings he would achieve through a freeze in many domestic programs would be devoted to increased spending in areas Obama considers priorities, such as education, clean energy and high-speed rail.

"We have more work to do to live up to our promise by repairing the damage this brutal recession has inflicted on our people," Obama said.

The president went to a middle school outside of Baltimore to highlight the education initiatives in his budget and told the crowd, "We can't sacrifice our future."

Republicans, who took control of the House in the November elections and picked up seats in the Senate in part because of voter anger over the soaring deficits, called Obama's efforts too timid. Lawmakers are set to begin debating on Tuesday $61 billion in cuts for the remaining seven months of fiscal 2011.

"Presidents are elected to lead and address big challenges," said Republican House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. "The big challenge facing our economy today and our country tomorrow is the debt crisis. He's making it worse, not better."

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said the president's investment plans missed the simple point that "we don't have the money" to finance Obama's vision of "trains and windmills" in the future.

"After two years of failed stimulus programs and Democrats in Washington competing to outspend each other, we just can't afford to do all the things the administration wants," McConnell said.

Even some Democrats complained that Obama needed a more vigorous attack on future budget deficits.

"We need a much more robust package of deficit and debt reduction over the medium- and long-term. It is not enough to focus primarily on cutting the non-security discretionary part of the budget," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., who called for a budget presentation matching the ambition of Obama's deficit commission.

Jacob Lew, the president's budget director, told reporters that the president's budget was a "meaningful down payment" in attacking the deficits that would get the country's finances headed in the right direction.

The $14 trillion national debt — the cumulative total of deficits — would grow to $16.7 trillion by Sept. 30, 2012, Obama's budget projects. Much of that debt is owed to China.

Obama's deficit commission made a host of painful recommendations including raising the Social Security retirement age and curbing benefit increases, eliminating or sharply scaling back popular tax breaks, reforming a financially unsound Medicare program and almost doubling the federal tax on gasoline. Obama included none of these proposals in his new budget. The deficit panel called for savings by making these politically tough choices of $4 trillion over a decade, four-times the savings that Obama is projecting.

The Obama budget plan, which is certain to be changed by Congress, would spend $3.73 trillion in the 2012 budget year, which begins Oct. 1, a reduction of 2.4 percent from what Obama projects will be spent in the current budget year.

Of the $1.1 trillion in deficit savings that Obama is projecting over the next 10 years, two-thirds would come from spending cuts, including $400 billion in savings from a five-year freeze on domestic programs that account for one-tenth of the budget. The other one-third of deficit savings would come from tax increases such as limiting the tax deductions taken by high income taxpayers, a proposal that Obama put forward last year only to have it rejected by Congress. Obama also proposes raising taxes on energy companies.

The president's projected $1.65 trillion deficit for the current year would be the highest dollar amount ever, surpassing the $1.41 trillion deficit hit in 2009. It would also represent 10.8 percent of the total economy, the highest level since the deficit stood at 21.5 percent of gross domestic product in 1945, reflecting heavy borrowing to fight World War II.

The president's 2012 budget projects that the deficits will total $7.21 trillion over the next decade with the imbalances never falling below $607 billion. Even then that would exceed the deficit record before Obama took office of $458.6 billion in 2008, President George W. Bush's last year in office.

Administration officials project that the deficits will be trimmed to 3.2 percent of GDP by 2015 — one-third of the projected 2011 imbalance and a level they said would not harm the economy.

However, to achieve the lower deficits required the administration to assume the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would plummet to $50 billion annually after 2012. The budget also fails to pay for the cost of keeping Medicare payments for doctors from being cut after 2013. Obama's budget also makes assumptions about economic growth that are more optimistic that those offered by many private economists.

While cutting many programs, the new budget does propose spending increases in selected areas of education, biomedical research, energy efficiency, high-speed rail and other areas that Obama judged to be important to the country's future competitiveness in a global economy.

In the energy area, the budget would support Obama's goal of putting 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015 and doubling the nation's share of electricity from clean energy sources by 2035.

The budget proposes program terminations or spending reductions for more than 200 programs at an estimated savings of $33 billion in 2012. Programs targeted for large cuts included Community Development Block Grants, trimmed by $300 million. A program that helps pay heating bills for low-income families would be cut in half for a savings of $2.5 billion. Another program supporting environmental restoration of the Great Lakes would be reduced by one-fourth for $125 million in savings.

The biggest tax hike would come from a proposal to trim the deductions the wealthiest Americans can claim for charitable contributions, mortgage interest and state and local tax payments. The administration proposed this tax hike last year but it was a nonstarter in Congress.

Obama's budget would also raise $46 billion over 10 years by eliminating various tax breaks to oil, gas and coal companies.

While Obama's budget avoided painful choices in entitlement programs, it did call for $78 billion in reductions to Pentagon spending over five years. That would be achieved by trimming what it views as unnecessary weapons programs such as the C-17 aircraft, the alternative engine for the Joint Strike Fighter aircraft and the Marine expeditionary vehicle.

Administration officials said that the savings from limiting tax deductions for high income taxpayers would be used to keep the Alternative Minimum Tax from hitting more middle-class families over the next two years.

The budget proposes $1 billion in cuts in grants for large airports, almost $1 billion in reduced support to states for water treatment plants and other infrastructure programs and savings from consolidating public health programs run by the Centers for Disease Control and various U.S. Forest Service programs.

The administration also proposed saving $100 billion from Pell Grants and other higher education programs over a decade through belt-tightening with the savings used to keep the maximum college financial aid award at $5,550.

The surge in deficits reflect the deep 2007-2009 recession, the worst since the Great Depression, which cut into government tax revenues as millions were thrown out of work and prompted massive government spending to jump-start economic growth and stabilize the banking system.

Republicans point to still-elevated unemployment levels and charge the stimulus programs were a failure. The administration contends the spending was needed to keep the country from falling into an even deeper slump.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110214/...s_obama_budget

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[Jolie Rouge]

How the Obama budget might fall on your shoulders
Calvin Woodward, Associated Press – 53 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Crumbling inner-city sidewalks, cleaner air, dirtier drinking water, more debt for some college students and higher heating costs for low-income families could be part of the legacy of President Barack Obama's proposed budget. One way or another, his effort to save money in hundreds of programs might touch every American.

No rewrite of the family budget is called for at this point. Obama's plan is little more than a wish list, certain to be reshaped by Congress if it even goes anywhere. (Last year's wish list didn't.)

But it shows where Obama wants to go, how he proposes to get there and, to some extent, what spending cuts and increases he is willing to fight for in a divided Congress where Republicans want to cut far more.

So if you are an older worker looking for the government's help training for a new job, for example, you might get a little nervous. Obama wants to halve a program that helps seniors with career or community service training.

Obama's budget would squeeze the poor on several fronts, the rich on one big front — their taxes — and others in scattered ways.

People living in or needing public housing will take a hit if he gets his way. Obama wants to spend much less to maintain public housing and to build new homes for the elderly and disabled. He also wants to cut by half the grants that provide poorer families with substantial help paying their energy bills.

And low-income students may feel a pinch with the president's plan to eliminate Pell grants for summer school. The savings would be used to keep the maximum Pell grant for the regular academic year uncut.

When a Democratic president and Republican lawmakers want to cut the same program, it's a safe bet that program is at risk. So it is with public housing, some environmental programs and certain other areas of spending.

Tax increases, though, are a much iffier proposition. In his budget, Obama proposes once more to raise taxes on the rich, not just increasing their rates but limiting their charitable, mortgage-interest and state-tax deductions. He gave up trying to increase taxes on the wealthy in the last round of wrangling but is trying again.

Government is so complex and sprawling that multiple spending programs are often aimed at the same problem, or very similar ones, and it can be a fool's game trying to see how it will all shake out. Sometimes, it depends where you live.

For example, Obama is seeking big cuts in grants that help states upgrade sewage treatment and drinking water systems. As well, he wants to do away with a clean-diesel program that his administration says removed tons of pollution and made people healthier. On the other hand, he wants to spend hundreds of millions more to help states meet sweeping air pollution regulations.

After expanding other programs that help students with their college debt, Obama wants to achieve some savings for the government from the same pot. He is proposing to reduce loan subsidies for graduate and professional students, exposing some of them to interest on their college loans while they are still in school.

In other ways, too, the government would give with one hand and take with the other.

Obama proposes a whopping 68 percent increase in Transportation Department spending, with much of the money geared to fixing highways and putting more people in high-speed trains.

Yet the vision of smoother blacktop appears not to extend to all roads. Obama is proposing cuts in community development grants that hard-pressed mayors use for streets, sidewalks, water and sewers in poor neighborhoods.

Many of the changes he wants to make would play out over time. His budget stuffs in billions to improve teaching in the years ahead and specifically to recruit 100,000 math and science teachers over a decade, as well as to bring high-speed wireless to more of rural America. Health research is a big priority, with dividends to come down the road.

Much closer to the here and now is the proposed halving of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, back to its level of 2008. The program cut energy costs for more than 8 million families last year, and an estimated 3.2 million families could lose the subsidies. "This is a very hard cut," said Jack Lew, Obama's budget director, who helped to create the program in the late 1970s. "This is a cut that has real impact."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110214/...ividual_impact



See also : Illegal migration fight is spared Obama budget ax
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110214/...ividual_impact

[Jolie Rouge]

Obama budget resurrects rejected tax increases
Stephen Ohlemacher, Associated Press – 42 mins ago

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's budget proposal resurrects a series of tax increases on certain corporations and the wealthy that were largely ignored by Congress when Democrats controlled both chambers. Republicans, who now control the House, are signaling they will be even less receptive.

The plan unveiled Monday includes tax increases for oil, gas and coal producers, investment managers and U.S.-based multinational corporations. The plan would allow Bush-era tax cuts to expire at the end of 2012 for individuals making more than $200,000 and married couples making more than $250,000. Wealthy taxpayers would have their itemized deductions limited starting in 2012, including deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions and state and local taxes.

Limiting those deductions would raise an additional $321 billion over the next decade. That money would be used to spare more than 20 million middle-income taxpayers from getting hit with a big tax increase from the alternative minimum tax for three years. Congress routinely passes a fix each year to spare middle-income taxpayers from the alternative minimum tax, but the cost is usually added to the budget deficit through increased borrowing.

"What we've done here is make a down payment, but there's going to be more work that needs to be done, and it's going to require Democrats and Republicans coming together to make it happen," Obama said.

Obama's proposal would extend tax credits for college expenses and expand them for child care. A more generous Earned Income Tax Credit for families with three or more children would be made permanent.

The plan would enhance and make permanent a popular business tax credit for research and development, and would provide tax breaks for investing in manufacturing and for making commercial buildings more energy efficient.

In all, the budget proposal would impose about $730 billion in new taxes on businesses and wealthy individuals over the next decade, while cutting about $400 billion in taxes on middle-income families, the working poor and other businesses, for a net tax increase of about $330 billion.

Those numbers, however, don't include additional tax revenue from letting Bush era tax cuts for the wealthy expire at the end of 2012. Letting those tax cuts expire would generate an additional $709 billion over the next decade, according to the budget proposal.

Many of the tax increases were in the president's previous budget proposals, offered when Obama could expect a more friendly reception from Congress. Lawmakers from both political parties, however, have been wary of limiting the ability of high earners to deduct charitable contributions out of concern it will hurt non-profit organizations.

A group of Senate Democrats has come out in favor of raising taxes on oil and gas companies, but Republicans, who generally oppose such tax increases, have the votes to block them in the Senate.

"The president recognizes that we don't need to provide 100 year-old tax breaks to oil companies so they can sell $100 per barrel oil and make more than $100 billion per year," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass.

Congressional Republicans called Obama's proposal a missed opportunity to address the nation's fiscal problems.

"In the face of record-high deficits and continued high levels of unemployment, a budget that imposes massive job-killing tax hikes on small businesses and fails to address entitlement reform or tax reform is hardly the answer," said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee. "Rather than setting the stage for broad-based, pro-growth tax reform, this budget goes in the opposite direction with more tax hikes."

Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said Republicans will oppose the tax increases in Obama's budget proposal.

"Keeping pace with its liberal tax-and-spend agenda, the Obama administration hits almost every sector of our economy with a tax hike — energy taxes, taxes on hiring, higher income taxes," Hatch said. "That's not how we get our country moving forward."

Obama has called for reforming individual income taxes and corporate taxes, saying he wants to eliminate special interest tax breaks and use the additional revenue to lower overall tax rates. Obama's budget proposal, however, breaks little new ground on the issue.

"Successful comprehensive tax reform is a long process, often taking several years," Obama says in his budget message. "But even though it is a daunting task, we cannot afford to shirk from the work."

In December, Congress extended through 2012 a series of tax cuts enacted under former President George W. Bush. Obama's proposed new budget calls for letting the tax cuts expire for the wealthy at the end of 2012, while making them permanent for individuals making less than $200,000 and couples making less than $250,000.

Republicans want to make all the tax cuts permanent, setting the stage for a showdown that could play out in the middle of the 2012 presidential election.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_obama_...JhbWFidWRnZXRy

[Jolie Rouge]

With Obama math, anything’s possible: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/...sidents-budget

Oh, no. It’s another White House White Board (click here for Austan Goolsbee’s turn last week http://michellemalkin.com/2011/02/03...artup-america/ )

Here, OMB Director Jack Lew tells you how spending into oblivion “while still investing in the future” = fiscal responsibility.

Takeaway sentence from ABC News’s description of the Obama budget unveiled today: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpu...get-fight.html

“At no point in the president’s 10-year projection would the U.S. government spend less than it’s taking in.”

$3.73 trillion. $1.6 trillion deficit this year alone. $7 trillion in deficits over 10 years http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110214/...s_obama_budget


“Austerity” my you-know-what.

Here is the actual 1,343-page budget proposal. http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Overview/

Lefties are huffing and puffing at what little the White House has proposed to cut: http://huff.to/dUkMlH

Obama’s new budget puts forward a plan to achieve $1.1 trillion in deficit reductions over the next decade, according to an administration official who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity in advance of the formal release of the budget.

Those cuts — roughly $100 billion each year — include squeezing social programs. A deal struck to extend the Bush tax cuts for just two years, meanwhile, increased the deficit by $858 billion dollars. More than $500 billion of that bargain constituted tax cuts, with billions more funding business tax breaks and a reduction in the estate tax. Roughly $56 billion went to reauthorize emergency unemployment benefits.

The president’s budget was expected to mostly target “non-defense discretionary spending,” which makes up less than one-quarter of the overall budget, making balancing the budget with such cuts mathematically impossible…

Flashback: Microscopic cuts depicted in Doug Ross’s Chart of the Day last week. http://directorblue.blogspot.com/201...-pictures.html

OMB director Jack Lew is complaining of “ a lot of pain” — more political, of course, than fiscal: http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2011...budget.html#tp

“What I would tell you about this budget is it has a lot of pain…it does the job, it cuts the deficit in half by the end of the president’s first term, it has $400 billion of savings which would bring spending on domestic discretionary spending down to the level it was at in the Eisenhower administration and we have made tough choices,” he said on “GMA.”

Interestingly, Lew took a pass on criticizing the $61 billion in budget cuts House Republicans are hoping to pass this year – even though I asked him twice. Because the White House knows they will almost certainly have to accept many of those cuts to avoid a government shutdown later this year. The first test could come when current government funding runs out on March 4.

On the third rail of massive entitlements, Obama says “You go first” to the GOP. Leadership: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...LEFTTopStories

The budget wouldn’t do much, though, to arrest a future spike in the projected costs of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Mr. Obama has said he’s open to making changes in these programs, but he wants cooperation from Republicans before he will begin.

Speaker Boehner is ready for battle: http://www.speaker.gov/Blog/?postid=224875 Obama’s budget will “Destroy Jobs By Spending Too Much, Borrowing Too Much, and Taxing Too Much.”

He dubbed the White House plan “Spending the Future.” http://twitter.com/SpeakerBoehner/st...19715653754880

Seizing the Future, actually… http://michellemalkin.com/2011/02/08...ze-the-future/


As the progs hammer away at the cost of the “Bush tax cuts” http://michellemalkin.com/2010/11/08...tax-increases/ GOP leaders still need to forcefully challenge the redistributor-in-chief’s idea that allowing taxpayers to keep money that is theirs to begin with is a government “spend.”



Where to cut: Cato’s agency-by-agency breakdown. http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/



From Obama’s remarks this morning, he asserted it is “absolutely essential that we live within our means.”

But the budget egg he laid today sabotages that very principle.

***

On a depressing fair and balanced note: GOP fails on entitlements, too. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner...-daniel-foster


***

Big suprise — Zero cuts to NPR funding: http://www.thewrap.com/media/column-...unds-npr-24733

Despite calls from conservatives and a bipartisan committee to cut federal funding of Corporation for Public Broadcasting, President Obama’s 2012 budget — released Monday — preserves the money that supports it.

Obama’s proposal includes $445 million in general programming grants for CPB in 2012, 2013 and 2014 — up from $430 million in 2011.

http://michellemalkin.com/2011/02/14...in-washington/

Comments

From Obama’s remarks this morning, he asserted it is “absolutely essential that we live within our means.”

Well, if a $1.5T deficit for one year and projected deficits in the same ramge for as far into the future as we can imagine qualifies as living within our means, my next call is to my credit card company to let them know I am taking a cue from Obama and putting a Lear jet, a Rolls Royce, and a beachfront condo on my plastic. And yes, I would expect them to honor the “nothing down, $100 a month in perpetuity plan” so I can continue to afford to live within my means.


---

So far, I haven’t heard a single word that gives me hope that ANY of them get it! Soon it won’t matter what we cut. It won’t be enough. It may already be too late. Raise the retirement age, get rid of obamacare, get all the deadbeats off the dole, kick the illegals out of our country (they are bleeding us dry), stop foreign aid to countries that hate us, start drilling, digging, putting up fences. Crack down on medicare fraud…big time!! Pass tort reform. All of this is doable and urgent. Get going, Congress…we are dying!

[Jolie Rouge]

Obama defends his new budget of 'tough choices'
Ben Feller, Ap White House Correspondent – 14 mins ago
WASHINGTON – Defending his new budget as one of "tough choices," President Barack Obama said Tuesday that more difficult decisions about the nation's biggest expenses — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — will have to be tackled by Democrats and Republicans acting together, not by White House dictates. "This is not a matter of, 'you go first, I go first,'" he said. "It's a matter of everybody having a serious conversation about where we want to go and then ultimately getting in that boat at the same time so it doesn't tip over."

The president pitched his $3.73 trillion budget as a balance of spending on needed programs and significant reductions that would cut the deficit by $1.1 trillion over 10 years. The budget includes a mix of spending freezes on domestic programs, pay hike suspensions for federal civilian workers and new revenues from increased taxes on the wealthy and on oil and gas producers.

But Obama's deficit relief is far more modest than that detailed by his fiscal commission, which in December proposed measures that would mop up four times as much red ink. Unlike his blue-ribbon group, the administration's budget does not address structural changes in Social Security or Medicare, the two largest items in the federal budget. "Look at the history of how these deals get done," Obama said Tuesday. "Typically it's not because there's an Obama plan out there. It's because Democrats and Republicans are committed to tackling this in a serious way."

The commission's bipartisan report included politically difficult recommendation such as increasing the Social Security retirement age and reducing future increases in benefits. And while Obama has promised to overhaul the corporate tax system, he stops short of commission recommendations that would lower rates but generate additional revenue at the same. Obama has called for "revenue neutral" fixes to corporate taxes, meaning they would neither cost more money nor add money to the treasury. "I'm not suggesting we don't have to do more," the president said.

At times defensive, Obama used his news conference to offer his own tutorial on how Washington works.

He voiced exasperation at what he said was the capital's impatient culture and its insistence on immediate results. He said he faced the same demands on health care, the military's don't-ask, don't-tell policy on gays, and on the uprising in Egypt, "There's a tendency for us to assume that if it didn't happen today, it's not going to happen," he said.

He also pulled the curtain back on the partisan positioning typical of politics, while at the same time pressing Republicans to join him at the negotiating table. "I expect that all sides will have to do a little posturing on television and speak to their constituencies and rally their troops," he said. "But ultimately what we need is a reasonable, responsible and initially probably somewhat quiet and toned-down conversation about, 'all right, where can we compromise and get something done. And I'm confident that'll be the spirit that congressional leaders take over the coming months."

Obama said he wants to work with Republicans to find common ground on government spending for the remainder of this fiscal year and to avoid a government shutdown. Stopping the basic functions of government could damage the economic recovery, he said. "I think it is important to make sure that we don't try to make a series of symbolic cuts this year that could endanger the recovery," he said. Obama said cutting too deeply in Washington could prompt thousands of layoffs in state and local governments, which would hurt the economy.

A shutdown, he said by way of example, would mean that Social Security payments don't go out. "This is not an abstraction," he said. "The key here is for people to be practical and not score political points. That's true for all of us."

Following his party's sweeping defeats in the November elections, Obama pledged to refocus his agenda on the economy and creating jobs. He used last month's State of the Union address to lay out an agenda that he said would spur job growth in the short-term and increase U.S. competitiveness in the future.

Obama's budget aims to cut the deficit in part with tax increases, including eliminating tax breaks for oil and gas producers, that have failed to win support before under a Democratic control Congress. The measures face an even tougher challenge now that Republicans control the House of Representatives. "I continue to believe I'm right," he said, when asked why he relied on previously defeated proposals. "so we're going to try again."

His new budget would cut spending on popular energy assistance programs and community development projects. Obama took note of the harsh impact that cuts can have on individual Americans. But he said the most important thing he can do as president is focus on the long-term stability of the economy to help the largest number of people. "I definitely feel folks' pain," he said, mentioning the gripping stories recounted in the 10 letters a day that he reads from among the thousands received at the White House. "You want to help every single one individually."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110215/...pr_wh/us_obama

See also : Illegal migration fight is spared Obama budget ax
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110214/...ividual_impact

Ask yourself "WHY?

Consider : No doubt that obama's new budget is bad and should never have happened. But I think we will see more bad things until our Government decides to get a handle on the mass invasion on our country. Not all are here just to work. With out the over crowding in our jails and prisons we could keep home grown criminals incarcerated the full term instead of letting them out early to commit more crimes.

"# Ninety-five percent of warrants for murder in Los Angeles, Calif. are for illegal aliens.

# Eighty-three percent of warrants for murder in Phoenix, Ariz. are for illegal aliens.

# Eighty-six percent of warrants for murder in Albuquerque, N.M., are for illegal aliens.

# Seventy-five percent of people on the "Most Wanted" list in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Albuquerque are illegal aliens.

# Twenty-five percent of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals who are here illegally.

# Forty percent of all inmates in Arizona detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally.

# Forty-eight percent of all inmates in New Mexico detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally.

# Twenty-nine percent (630,000) convicted illegal alien felons occupy our state and federal prisons at a cost of $1.6 billion annually.

# More than 53 percent of burglaries in California, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas are perpetrated by illegal aliens.

# More than half of all gang members in Los Angeles are illegal aliens from south of the border.

# More than 70 percent of all cars stolen in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California are stolen by illegals.

# Forty-seven percent of drivers stopped by police in California have no license, insurance, or registration; and of that 47 percent, 92 percent are illegal aliens.

# Sixty-three percent of stopped drivers in Arizona have no license, insurance, or registration for the vehicle. Of that 63 percent, 97 percent are illegal aliens.

# Sixty-six percent of stopped drivers in New Mexico have no license, insurance, or registration; and of that 66 percent, 98 percent are illegals.

A recent study by Pew Hispanic Center reveals Hispanics are two times more likely to be incarcerated than non-Hispanics.

They are 3.8 times more likely to be imprisoned for murder than non-Hispanics and Hispanic youth are more likely to be found in gangs.

Fifty-five percent of Mexican Americans consider themselves to be Mexican first.

All of these statistics are present at a time when our government plots to destroy the future sustainability of our country.

Ted Kennedy, John McCain, Arlen Specter, Nancy Pelosi, and George Bush are planning to sneak a comprehensive immigration reform bill into law.

They have proposed Senate Bill 26-11 which would give blanket amnesty to illegal alien employers and carte blanche to illegal aliens to rape our welfare system, medical care, and schools creating two tiers of justice, one to abide by our laws, and the other for illegals who don't have to abide by our laws.

And the aim of this group is to give citizenship to illegal aliens, 30 million strong ?

[Jolie Rouge]

Obama's "tough budget cuts" in pictures
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/201...-pictures.html

President Obama's 2012 budget will be roughly $3,800,000 million ($3.8 trillion).

The anticipated 2012 budget deficit will be $1,500,000 million ($1.5 trillion). This means we are borrowing that amount from our children to fund all of the Democrats' Utopian spending programs.

Finally, the president has proposed "tough budget cuts" that total $775 million. No, that's not a joke.

Let's illustrate the magnitude of Obama's cuts.



Obama's cuts aren't even visible in this chart. Let's zoom in.



Blowing it up about ten times allows us to see a tiny little sliver: those are the cuts.



Blowing the chart up a further ten times still barely exposes Obama's proposed cuts.

President Obama's budget director Jack Lew in a Sunday opinion piece outlined some off the "tough choices" Obama is willing to make to cut spending in his 2012 budget request due out on Feb. 14... The cuts are relatively small, however, in the larger scheme of things. In total, the $775 million in detailed cuts fall far short of demands by congressional Republicans and will do little toward tackling the deficit, which is estimated to be $1.5 trillion this year by the Congressional Budget Office...

...Lew said that the Valentine's Day budget will proposed cutting in half community service block grants to grassroots groups in poor communities... He said "this cut is not easy for" Obama.

Not easy.

Our country's going bankrupt and he can't find anything to cut.

These Democrats are so far off the reservation that there's really no hope left for them as a political party. You need to expose this irresponsible President and his sycophants to everyone you know. We must begin laying the groundwork for 2012.

If we are to salvage this Republic, we must eradicate every Democrat -- for there are no moderate Democrats left -- at the ballot box in 2012. At every level of government. Because this degree of dishonesty and wanton fiscal destruction must be rewarded with political obliteration.

From Obama’s remarks this morning, he asserted it is “absolutely essential that we live within our means.”

Takeaway sentence from ABC News’s description of the Obama budget unveiled today: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpu...get-fight.html

“At no point in the president’s 10-year projection would the U.S. government spend less than it’s taking in.”

comments

It's hard to wrap my mind around a 40% budget deficit. People that think its cool to spend 40% more than they are going to receive in revenues should not be allowed near the levers of power.

[Jolie Rouge]

Fear-mongerer-in-chief: GOP wants to take away babies’ infant formula, vets’ checks, seniors’ benefits!
By Michelle Malkin • February 15, 2011 12:27 PM

President Obama just completed a news conference this morning.

In sum, he “continues to believe he is right” about job-killing tax hikes; insists, like a Disney automaton, that he is the Captain of the Industries of the Future and will punish “energy sources of the past” (the oil and gas you are presently putting in your car) no matter the job-killing consequences; is simultaneously for fiscal responsibility and against GOP budget cuts because we the economic recovery is “fragile” and we should “stop trying to score political points” — except, by the way, we should be careful NOT TO TAKE INFANT FORMULA AWAY from poor mothers or VETERANS BENEFITS’ CHECKS AND SOCIAL SECURITY CHECKS from SENIOR CITIZENS!



Just a side note on the infant formula line: Guess he didn’t run that by the Missus, who is using the East Wing to engineer the tax code to disfavor formula feeding in favor of government-sponsored breast pumps. Oops. http://www.politicsdaily.com/2011/02...es-tax-breaks/


Longtime readers know I am a vocal defender of breast-feeding moms, http://michellemalkin.com/2005/06/15...the-boob-tube/ but Mrs. O’s Big Bosom initiative is another East Wing social engineering power grab. I’ll have much more in my column on this topic tomorrow. Stay tuned.



Now, back to your regularly scheduled Winning the Future programming…

…and Democrat demagoguery: http://twitter.com/NancyPelosi/status/37552816998322176




http://michellemalkin.com/2011/02/15...iors-benefits/

comments

With all legal American’s out of work, the feds hire illegal aliens to build VA hospital in FL! This government is so scr@wed up, one wonders if we will be here in another two years?

http://nation.foxnews.com/culture/20...ld-va-hospital

-----

They need one simple resonant message that makes sense. . .

CRISIS means go back to 2007 spending levels. Everyone suffers the same but we baseline at about 200B deficit.

2007 spending levels would cut the deficit down to 200B even with the war, even with the tax cuts.

From there, entitlements are a separate thing from the budget. They should have their own bill. Medicare is easy if you raise the deductible to 2000 which is paid by their insurance company anyway. . . so they’ll get higher supplement prices but the government saves money.

The fixes are easy, but you have to have leadership. Obama said they needed to have an adult conversation, but he has to be an adult to be involved in that conversation.

He’s all about the next election. It’s the only thing he’s concerned about for the rest of his life. Once he gets elected again, he won’t care. He wants to be seen as the guy who wants to give everyone everything and saving America from Republicans.

---

I am convinced he is crazy. No one can possibly think like that! Does this man ever listen to himself???

Far from it…his tactics are from Alinsky’s playbook – attack and demonize the opposition with lies to nuetralize its effectiveness and make it spends its efforts on defending itself instead of being on the offensive.

====

The response should be very simple and clear, “The President is lying.”

MSM: “Did you call the President a liar?”

GOP: “No, we said he lied about the budget.”

MSM: “Isn’t that disrespectful?”

GOP: ” It is as respectful as having called President Bush a liar. Obama needs to prove that he didn’t. Next question.”

That is how we need to start responding.

-----

Some fun tidbits:
January 2009 Gas was $1.83 per gallon Today it is $3.104 a 69.6% increase
January 2009 The Unemployment rate was 7.6%, Today is it 9.4% ?? 23.7% increase
January 2009 2,600,00 Long Term unemployed Today 6,400,000 a 146.2% increase

----

The vulgar amount of cynicism required to push the creation of this “Win the Future” meme belies the administration’s Ivy League roots. Who else could believe that Americans are so shallow and stupid?

It’s as if they think we won’t pay attention to the details or consider in any depth the choices we must make as a people.

You would think that all they believe we care about are celebrity awards shows or professional sports or working our virtual farms. (Well…)

Well, they thought we’d be stupid enough to elect a president and a congress that would swing the country way left to counterbalance what was supposedly a far right administration. (Ahem, they were correct there.)

Maybe the people of the United States are too far gone. Maybe we deserve this. Maybe fiscal restraint and responsibility simply aren’t compatible with representative democracy.

We all know that politics has been a dirty business since the gavel came down to open the first congress. The shenanigans at all levels of government are an embarrassment to the rational side of humanity.

But there is something special going on here. The enormity of the spending. The lack of accountability. The deep cynicism of the intelligence of the citizens of the USA.

I know that many people felt this way about FDR, but then WWII began and gave us purpose beyond the domestic tricks and faux justifications for defying the Constitution and expanding the federal government’s reach.

Not that the government has not done some good things, many of them justified, but this is so bad, so over-reaching, as to defy the trust in the most credulous among us (dailykos posters being the primary exception.)

I’m done with this. I need to find some more effective way to fight this. (Hopefully, that last line doesn’t trigger an NSA/FBI/Homeland Security investigation.)

[Jolie Rouge]

Fear-mongerer-in-chief: GOP wants to take away babies’ infant formula, vets’ checks, seniors’ benefits!
By Michelle Malkin • February 15, 2011 12:27 PM

President Obama just completed a news conference this morning.

In sum, he “continues to believe he is right” about job-killing tax hikes; insists, like a Disney automaton, that he is the Captain of the Industries of the Future and will punish “energy sources of the past” (the oil and gas you are presently putting in your car) no matter the job-killing consequences; is simultaneously for fiscal responsibility and against GOP budget cuts because we the economic recovery is “fragile” and we should “stop trying to score political points” — except, by the way, we should be careful NOT TO TAKE INFANT FORMULA AWAY from poor mothers or VETERANS BENEFITS’ CHECKS AND SOCIAL SECURITY CHECKS from SENIOR CITIZENS!



Just a side note on the infant formula line: Guess he didn’t run that by the Missus, who is using the East Wing to engineer the tax code to disfavor formula feeding in favor of government-sponsored breast pumps. Oops. http://www.politicsdaily.com/2011/02...es-tax-breaks/


Longtime readers know I am a vocal defender of breast-feeding moms, http://michellemalkin.com/2005/06/15...the-boob-tube/ but Mrs. O’s Big Bosom initiative is another East Wing social engineering power grab. I’ll have much more in my column on this topic tomorrow. Stay tuned.



Now, back to your regularly scheduled Winning the Future programming…

…and Democrat demagoguery: http://twitter.com/NancyPelosi/status/37552816998322176




http://michellemalkin.com/2011/02/15...iors-benefits/

comments

With all legal American’s out of work, the feds hire illegal aliens to build VA hospital in FL! This government is so scr@wed up, one wonders if we will be here in another two years?

http://nation.foxnews.com/culture/20...ld-va-hospital

-----

They need one simple resonant message that makes sense. . .

CRISIS means go back to 2007 spending levels. Everyone suffers the same but we baseline at about 200B deficit.

2007 spending levels would cut the deficit down to 200B even with the war, even with the tax cuts.

From there, entitlements are a separate thing from the budget. They should have their own bill. Medicare is easy if you raise the deductible to 2000 which is paid by their insurance company anyway. . . so they’ll get higher supplement prices but the government saves money.

The fixes are easy, but you have to have leadership. Obama said they needed to have an adult conversation, but he has to be an adult to be involved in that conversation.

He’s all about the next election. It’s the only thing he’s concerned about for the rest of his life. Once he gets elected again, he won’t care. He wants to be seen as the guy who wants to give everyone everything and saving America from Republicans.

---

I am convinced he is crazy. No one can possibly think like that! Does this man ever listen to himself???

Far from it…his tactics are from Alinsky’s playbook – attack and demonize the opposition with lies to nuetralize its effectiveness and make it spends its efforts on defending itself instead of being on the offensive.

====

The response should be very simple and clear, “The President is lying.”

MSM: “Did you call the President a liar?”

GOP: “No, we said he lied about the budget.”

MSM: “Isn’t that disrespectful?”

GOP: ” It is as respectful as having called President Bush a liar. Obama needs to prove that he didn’t. Next question.”

That is how we need to start responding.

-----

Some fun tidbits:
January 2009 Gas was $1.83 per gallon Today it is $3.104 a 69.6% increase
January 2009 The Unemployment rate was 7.6%, Today is it 9.4% ?? 23.7% increase
January 2009 2,600,00 Long Term unemployed Today 6,400,000 a 146.2% increase

----

The vulgar amount of cynicism required to push the creation of this “Win the Future” meme belies the administration’s Ivy League roots. Who else could believe that Americans are so shallow and stupid?

It’s as if they think we won’t pay attention to the details or consider in any depth the choices we must make as a people.

You would think that all they believe we care about are celebrity awards shows or professional sports or working our virtual farms. (Well…)

Well, they thought we’d be stupid enough to elect a president and a congress that would swing the country way left to counterbalance what was supposedly a far right administration. (Ahem, they were correct there.)

Maybe the people of the United States are too far gone. Maybe we deserve this. Maybe fiscal restraint and responsibility simply aren’t compatible with representative democracy.

We all know that politics has been a dirty business since the gavel came down to open the first congress. The shenanigans at all levels of government are an embarrassment to the rational side of humanity.

But there is something special going on here. The enormity of the spending. The lack of accountability. The deep cynicism of the intelligence of the citizens of the USA.

I know that many people felt this way about FDR, but then WWII began and gave us purpose beyond the domestic tricks and faux justifications for defying the Constitution and expanding the federal government’s reach.

Not that the government has not done some good things, many of them justified, but this is so bad, so over-reaching, as to defy the trust in the most credulous among us (dailykos posters being the primary exception.)

I’m done with this. I need to find some more effective way to fight this. (Hopefully, that last line doesn’t trigger an NSA/FBI/Homeland Security investigation.)

[Jolie Rouge]

Obama Budget Adds $9.5 Trillion to US Debt
March 29, 2011

1. CBO Confirms Obama Budget Adds $9.5 Trillion of Debt

2. Dallas Fed Chief Warns US is at a Debt “Tipping Point”

3. Enormous Spending Cuts Required to Balance Budget

4. Do Americans Really Want Serious Spending Cuts?

Introduction

On March 18, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office released its annual “re-calculation” of President Obama’s 10-year budget proposal that he released in February. The CBO now estimates that Obama’s budget proposal will add $9.5 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years, if enacted.

The latest figures project the national debt to increase by more than $2 trillion above what the White House put out in its forecast last month. My readers were not surprised, however, because in my February 22 E-Letter, I showed you that Obama’s 10-year “adjusted baseline” deficits added up to $9.4 trillion. Now the CBO says it will be even higher than the totals I showed you last month.

Even the CBO’s latest estimates are likely to be too optimistic as well. For example, both the President’s and the CBO’s budget estimates assume that there will not be a recession in the next 10 years, and both include interest rate estimates that are probably too low. Today we will take a look at the latest budget numbers from the CBO.

Like a lot of other analysts, I don’t believe that it will be remotely possible to add almost $10 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years. The bond market won’t stand for it, much less the foreigners that own almost 50% of our national debt held by the public. If we continue down this path of runaway debt, another even larger financial crisis is coming our way sooner or later.

On that note, Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher warned last Tuesday that the next financial crisis will may be coming soon. Fisher noted that the US is now at a debt “tipping point,” and he urged Fed Chairman Bernanke and other members of the Fed not to concoct another QE3 when the current QE2 ends in June.

That raises questions about what will happen when QE2 ends, assuming that it is the end of the line for massive Fed purchases of US Treasury debt. I will also offer some thoughts on that topic in the pages that follow.

Finally, I will follow up on a topic I also focused on in my February 22 E-Letter. Many Americans say they want government spending cut; that theme was clear in the 2010 mid-term elections. But do they really? Some recent polls shed some interesting (disappointing) light on that subject. That’s a lot to cover in one letter, so let’s get started.



Read The Full Article Now >> http://www.investorsinsight.com/blog...o-us-debt.aspx

[Jolie Rouge]

Rural America: 'If government's the problem, shoot it.'
Walter Rodgers – Mon Apr 11, 10:07 am ET

The classic children’s story begins, “A wild, ringing neigh shrilled up from the hold of the Spanish galleon.” “Misty of Chincoteague” is one of those books you really wanted to believe as a kid: A shipload of Moorish ponies destined for the New World founders in a storm off the Virginia and Maryland barrier islands. The author tells us that for centuries they roamed “free, free, free,” on Assateague and Chincoteague as “the ponies adopted the New World as their own.” Today, the ponies still roam the islands, wild as ever. Reinforcing the legend, there’s a lovely bronze statue of “Misty” in the heart of the town of Chincoteague.

The author of this charming children’s book, Marguerite Henry, assures us that “All the incidents in this story are real.” But they probably are not. There’s no evidence that a Spanish ship carrying ponies sank there. A better explanation, historians say, is that these horses represent the grand American traditions of tax evasion and rural lawlessness.

Three hundred years ago, long before the Boston Tea Party, Virginia and Maryland farmers hid their horses on off-shore islands to avoid paying Colonial taxes on livestock. The pony herds eventually became feral. The historic lawlessness of Maryland and Virginia’s Eastern Shore is well documented in Charlton Ogburn’s Jr.’s classic, “The Winter Beach,” and James Michener’s novel “Chesapeake.”

Perhaps it would help to think of Chincoteague’s early Colonial tax dodgers as our bucolic pioneers in the disregard of the law – a tradition that still thrives. Fifteen percent of Americans admit they are likely to cheat on their taxes, according to a recent survey. Two-thirds of that group are men, mostly young and single. And nearly half say they are one paycheck away from financial disaster. Increasingly, and not just in the tax arena, it seems Americans are looking at a distressed moral landscape, which often takes form as local poverty and blight.

Rural crime and lawlessnessTraditionally, it is cities that have been viewed as centers of crime and lawlessness, but that is somewhat misleading. “One of the least understood topics in the field of criminology and criminal justice is that of rural crime,” wrote Joseph Donnermeyer, a professor of rural sociology at Ohio State University and director of the national rural crime prevention center, in 1995.

Rural Americans – and the politicians who patronize them – have promoted the idea that they are the nation’s upholders of righteousness, morality, and virtue. But this agrarian myth conveniently ignores our rustic romance with rural crime, from Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger to moon-shiners, the Ku Klux Klan, and marijuana farming.

It requires no great power of observation to see that in many pockets of Appalachia and much of rural America, our country cousins have long declared laws unto themselves. Old and established families often claim hereditary rights that they allege supersede state and US law, according to one federal law enforcement officer.

It is a national joke that rural speeding violations and DUI citations are for out-of-towners only, not local townspeople. I know of one hamlet in western Massachusetts where, when a new police officer was hired, he was specifically told that townspeople were not to be ticketed.

Local immunities : A convenience store operator in one New England village reportedly hustles his grocery clerk out the back door when he gets word that a state inspector is on the way to check employment compensation records.

President Reagan did America no favors when he preached that 'government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.'

On Virginia’s Eastern Shore, rural support for that sentiment means that some game wardens (who are federal law enforcement officials) feel the need to wear bulletproof vests to work every day. One told me that it was not uncommon in hunting season for him to be peppered with birdshot when he is out in a boat. Rural logic is obvious: “If government’s the problem, shoot it.”

US Coast Guard crews, charged with marine safety inspections and smuggling interdiction, privately complain about the antigovernment vibe. “The locals have great distrust and hostility toward us,” one Coast Guard seaman told me. Frequently, recreational boaters try to outrun the Coast Guard to escape prosecution for boating under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

That’s “failure to heave to.” And it’s a federal crime.

A distressed moral landscapeFlouting the law has become a kind of Declaration of Independence in the hinterlands. It is often aided and abetted by state and federal lawmakers intent on watering down existing statutes to cozy up to their “good ol’ boyâ€

Increasingly, Americans have come to believe the law applies to everyone else, as they claim their private immunities. They rail at Wall Street crimes and illegal immigrants, yet they wink at their own tax evasion and hiring of “day laborers” to help with yardwork. This collective lawlessness may seem mild enough to be harmless, but it is inevitably corrosive and destructive, dismantling a society rivet by rivet.

Walter Rodgers, a former senior international correspondent for CNN, writes a biweekly column.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20110411/cm_csm/376070

comments

Perhaps the problem is that there are laws that shouldn't be on the books to begin with.

All these people flouting all these laws and yet society doesn't collapse, there isn't anarchy in the streets, maybe we really *are* over regulated....

Rosa parks was a hero for ignoring a law that shouldn't have existed, Harriet Tubman and countless other abolitionists even more so.

Over regulation and government overreach in the form of prohibition led to the rise of organized crime, the only way to fight organized crime effectively (as opposed to the current method of using it as an excuse for a larger budget) is to make it unprofitable.

How many speak easy owners and rum runners do you think are on the payroll of the mafia today ?

How long do you think the gangs could last selling drugs with pfizer and phillip morris as their competition ?

How long do you think they would last without a source of income ?

--

You chose novels as factual sources, huh? Most game wardens are not federal employees, rather they are employeed by the states. Do you really have any facts in your piece? I could take this article a little more seriously if our entire nation had not just gotten ripped off by Wall Street criminals with the - at best - passive assistance of our government.

---

The vast majority of crime occurs in urban areas. Areas where there is a LOT of government. What does that say about our government--state, local, and federal--to prevent crime? And why is this article attempting to stereotype rural folks? If Mr. Rodgers did so to Blacks or Hispanics, he'd rightly be criticized for racial bigotry.

Yes, many rural people distrust government. So do Americans who live in suburban and urban areas, white and non-white, liberal and conservative. It is an aspect of the American character to distrust the government.

---

Only a liberal intellectual who believes himself to be superior would write such trite but then they have to put someone down to keep themselves built up. And of course it had to be in a liberal rag like the CSM. Another liberal-slanted article by a liberal yahoo. I swear, all the news sites are getting infected by this mess.

[Jolie Rouge]

Budget tricks helped Obama save programs from cuts
Andrew Taylor, Associated Press – 29 mins ago

WASHINGTON – The 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 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 that sleight of hand, 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. Food aid to the poor was preserved, as were housing subsidies.

Instead, the cuts that actually will make it into law are far tamer, including cuts to earmarks, unspent census money, leftover federal construction funding, and $2.5 billion from the most recent renewal of highway programs that can't be spent because of restrictions set by other legislation. Another $3.5 billion comes from unused bonus money for states that enroll more uninsured children in a program providing health care to children of lower-income families.

Still, Obama and his Democratic allies accepted $600 million in cuts to community health centers programs, $414 million in cuts to grants for state and local police departments, and a $1.6 billion reduction in the Environmental Protection Agency budget, almost $1 billion of which would come from grants for clean water and other projects by local governments and Indian tribes. Community development block grants, a favorite with mayors of both political parties, take a $950 million cut.

The National Institutes of Health, which fund critical medical research, would absorb a $260 million cut, less than 1 percent of the NIH budget, instead of the $1.6 billion cut sought by House Republicans. Family planning programs would bear a 5 percent cut rather than being completely eliminated.

Homeland security programs would have to take their first-ever cut, though much of the 2 percent decrease comes from a $786 million cut to first responder grants to state and local governments. The IRS would see its budget frozen but be spared the 5 percent cut sought by House Republicans.

About $10 billion of the cuts already have been enacted as the price for keeping the government open as negotiations progressed; lawmakers tipped their hand regarding another $10 billion or so when the House passed a spending bill last week that ran aground in the Senate.

For instance, the spending measure reaps $350 million by cutting a one-year program enacted in 2009 for dairy farmers then suffering from low milk prices. Another $650 million comes by not repeating a one-time infusion into highway programs passed that same year. And just last Friday, Congress approved Obama's $1 billion request for high-speed rail grants — crediting itself with $1.5 billion in savings relative to last year.

The underlying issue is long overdue legislation to finance the day-to-day budget of every Cabinet department, including the Pentagon, for the already half-completed 2011 fiscal year. The measure caps 2011 funding for such operating budgets at about $1.2 trillion.

About $10 billion of the cuts comes from targeting appropriations accounts previously used by lawmakers for so-called earmarks, those pet projects like highways, water projects, community development grants and new equipment for police and fire departments. Republicans had already engineered a ban on earmarks when taking back the House this year.

Lawmakers also claimed $5 billion in savings by capping payments from a fund awarding compensation to crime victims. Under an arcane bookkeeping rule — used for years by appropriators — placing a cap on spending from the Justice Department crime victims fund allows lawmakers to claim the entire contents of the fund as budget savings. The savings are awarded year after year.

While the maximum Pell Grant won't be cut, the measure eliminates a recently enacted year-round grant that proved far more costly than expected. That will produce small savings at first, about $500 million this year, but a total of $35 billion over the upcoming decade.

Even before details of the bill came out, some conservative Republicans were assailing it. Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., said he probably won't vote for the measure, and tea party favorite Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., is a "nay" as well.

And in another blow Tuesday, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, announced he'll oppose the bill in a vote Thursday. Jordan's opposition is noteworthy because he chairs the Republican Study Committee, with a membership that makes up a sizable majority of GOP lawmakers. "Americans want us to reach higher, act bolder, and remember the job we were sent here to do," Jordan said.

The White House rejected GOP attempts to block the EPA's ability to issue global warming rules and other reversals of environmental regulations. Obama also forced Republicans to drop an effort to cut off Planned Parenthood from federal funding, as well as GOP moves to stop implementation of Obama's overhauls of health care and Wall Street regulation.

The administration also thwarted a GOP attempt to block new rules governing the Internet, as well as a National Rifle Association-backed attempt to neuter a little-noticed initiative aimed at catching people running guns to Mexican drug lords by having regulators gather information on batch purchases of rifles and shotguns.

Anti-abortion lawmakers did, however, succeed in winning a provision to block taxpayer-funded abortions in the District of Columbia. And House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, won funding for a personal initiative to provide federally funded vouchers for District of Columbia students to attend private schools.

Instead of sharply cutting the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, both agencies would get increases under the legislation as they gear up to implement last year's overhaul of financial regulation. And renewable energy programs are cut $407 million below last year, almost 20 percent. The Army Corps of Engineers, which funds flood control and inland waterway projects, will absorb a $578 million cut, representing about 10 percent of its budget.

And, as expected, the bill eliminates funding for the development of an alternative for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_spendi...RnZXR0cmlja3M-


We should be voting for accountants....not lawyers.

--

The truth is if they didn't have us, they would have to take cuts themselves. They don't include themselves in on what they legislate into our lives. Hey, look at the new healthcare bill. They are not included. They weren't even included on no-pay if the government shut down. They were the only ones to get paid while everyone else got screwed. Vote out the ruling class and start ASAP! It don't matter which party, we only have a two party system that exploits us in any way they can. This isn't even about Democrats and Republicans anymore, it is
us vs. lousy, greedy politicians. Cut lifetime pay and benefits for ALL politicians, now that is a cut everyone can agree with.

---

38 Billion in cuts compared to 1.5 Trillion in debt just this year is the joke of the year yet everyone is celebrating? The politicians must be laughing at the American public because it seems we really are that stupid. :

---

Just days after Obama announces "historic" $38 billion budget cuts, we learn lawmakers did it by accounting sleight of hand. That's just great. They "saved" $38 billion and during the 2 weeks they battled it out, the country went $53 billion deeper into debt. Now let's see what they come up with for the 2012 budget!