Stupid: $17 billion is a lot of money outside D.C., says Obama
posted at 4:00 pm on May 7, 2009 by Allahpundit
Ed crunched the numbers on Obama’s ridiculous budget cuts this morning but I thought you’d enjoy video of The One insisting, with all apparent sincerity, that they’re really quite substantial once you remove, um, all relevant context. Watch here. It’s as supreme an insult to the intelligence of average Americans as anything he’s said thus far as president, including reminding people to wash their hands to avoid swine flu. To put the cuts in perspective, imagine a family that’s already deeply in debt realizing they’re on pace to spend $50,000 this year — and “scaling back” by foregoing one $250 purchase. One half of one percent. That’s what we’re talking about.
Actually, here’s an even better perspective. Remember, Bush’s last budget deficit was less than one quarter the size of what this year’s will be under Obama. And yet:
During his tenure, Mr. Bush also annually announced cuts. The list would carry over year after year as Congress, which zealously guards its spending powers, rejected most of the proposals.
Mr. Bush’s fiscal 2009 list included reducing or eliminating 151 discretionary spending programs, over which Congress has the most control, for a savings of $18 billion.
Bush cut more than Obama did. I’ll leave you to this clip of Judd Gregg on the Senate floor this afternoon invoking oceans and deserts to explain just how little The One achieved here, but if you can spare the time, read David Ignatius’s op-ed about the inevitable deepening of the social-security crisis once boomers who were too dumb to plan for retirement start demanding a hike in benefits to bail them out. Can’t wait for that presser, when Obama tells us an extra trillion really isn’t a lot of money inside D.C.
Blowback
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Husband and cat lost.
Reward for cat.
MB4 on May 7, 2009 at 6:15 PM
Yes, so look for Barry & his thugs to ram through cap & trade and other taxes. Can you say $10 a gallon for gas. Of course Barry will say it’s for the greater good. Bullshit to that. Start your own lobby. Lobby for new people to get rid of these *sswipes.
izoneguy on May 7, 2009 at 6:16 PM
ahahahaha.
scalleywag on May 7, 2009 at 6:17 PM
If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
Tav on May 7, 2009 at 6:18 PM
TAv:
Ah yes, who said that? Some dead philosopher.
Terrye on May 7, 2009 at 6:21 PM
scalleywag:
Men, can’t live with them..can’t shoot them.
But if you do, drag his body to the front door and say he was trying to break in.
Terrye on May 7, 2009 at 6:25 PM
Anybody got any spicy mustard, some Dijon mustard, something like that?
long_cat on May 7, 2009 at 6:38 PM
Are you smarter than a Kenyan?
tarpon on May 7, 2009 at 6:41 PM
Welcome to the wonderfull world of California budget cuts!
First, they add to the spending plan in a major way.
Then, they call any ‘adjustment’ to the inflated plan a ‘cut’.
In the end, it is a massive increase in the budget and the words are simply lies.
Freddy on May 7, 2009 at 6:43 PM
The first word in the title sums it up completely.
Cybergeezer on May 7, 2009 at 6:46 PM
Obamanation went through it line by line. Sounds like he’s back to doing coke again. Research shows that doing coke addles your brain. I’m sure you can find something about that if you’ll just search the web.
TruthToBeTold on May 7, 2009 at 6:47 PM
…and the one $250, purchase is less than half the cost of a new pair of sneaks for the Greatest First Lady Eva!!!
saltydogg14 on May 7, 2009 at 6:55 PM
Given that $100million from the 7 trillion was “a lot of money outside of Washington” this is redux. He’s looking for the magic number that people will swallow as “a lot of money” outside of DC. How many times will he use the same line? How soon will the tone of voice become brittle and snippy when he castigates his audience for questioning his sense of proportion?
maverick muse on May 7, 2009 at 7:01 PM
$3.55 Trillion = $3,550 Billion in spending….
….. and (I don’t even know what to call him anymore) NOTUS (to fall back on a favorite) says he is “cutting” $17 Billion.
$3,550 – $17 = Leaves $3,533 Billion in spending of money we don’t have……
……. but the “cuts” are not really cuts are they?
This is all a farce, a lie, told with a straight face, and not one “journalist” in the room is going to call him on it…..
…….. when your Grand Children ask you why they are living in a hut with a dirt floor, are hungry all the time, and live in a country owned by the Chinese,
you can look back in fondness of the first 100+ days of the Obama Administration………..
Seven Percent Solution on May 7, 2009 at 7:04 PM
I am ready, double social security and I might sign up….
right2bright on May 7, 2009 at 7:05 PM
Throughout high school I used to work at a pizza restaurant. Without fail, every day I worked some morbidly obese person would come in and order well over the daily recommended amount of calories in a single meal, yet be adamant they be served diet soda because they’re trying to “cut back.” I’m sorry but when your inhaling 5000 calories a day switching to diet soda is not going to make any difference, and you don’t need to be a dietician to know that. Maybe the Obama administration needs a economic dietician…or anyone who passed fourth grade math to tell him that excising a couple billion is nothing compared to the trillion of dollars he has/is/will thrown/throwing/will throw away.
irukandji_syndrome on May 7, 2009 at 7:15 PM
Those people are thieves stealing my children’s future.
boomer on May 7, 2009 at 7:17 PM
17Bn is a lot and it all counts and 3.4Tn is a helluva lot worse, not better.
Speakup on May 7, 2009 at 7:38 PM
Gaze long enough into the abyss and the edge will crumble.
Its not the abyss gazing back at you, you’re getting closer.
Stupid sh!t is, as stupid sh!t dooooeeeessssss
Speakup on May 7, 2009 at 7:44 PM
Most peoples’ eyes glaze over when they hear “trillions”. A better way to say it might be “I’m cutting $17 billion out of the $3,400 billion budget”. Then people could see how pitiful it is.
Just think how much more he could have saved by vetoing the “stimulus” bill.
darwin-t on May 7, 2009 at 7:54 PM
Except, as I noted in this comment to Ed’s post, I found an AP article that point out that there are no cuts:
Paul_in_NJ on May 7, 2009 at 7:54 PM
He’s so sassy!
JohnJ on May 7, 2009 at 8:06 PM
AP – this is not the right analogy. It’s more like that same $50,000 per year family announcing that for the next 8 years they were going to spend $230,000 per year – but proudly stressing that they were NOT,NOT,NOT staying at Walt Disney’s Grand Floridian on vacation this year.
Midnightrain on May 7, 2009 at 8:13 PM
If my wife were to spend $3847.86 on groceries today, & then exult that she saved $1.83 with coupons, I’d say that she’s been Obamized.
jgapinoy on May 7, 2009 at 8:17 PM
Welcome to the age of Obamath!
Apparently numbers are only important when the tell the story he wants to tell.
Chitownmom on May 7, 2009 at 8:30 PM
And so we enter into the age of Obamath!
sigh.
Chitownmom on May 7, 2009 at 8:54 PM
Tune in NOW to see a video exposing campaign finance and bailout corruption !!!
http://www.tellyourneighbor.com/icaucus/invite/
A voice of reason on May 7, 2009 at 8:58 PM
I am confused…17 billion is a lot of money……yet 8 billion to the unions is chump change…..6 billion to ACORN chump change…..this is hard
nondhimmie on May 7, 2009 at 9:40 PM
I’ll give him this much….1/10th of 1% of my farts still smell pretty darn bad after a few Guiness…
but ya see what I did there, the way to make it stop stinkin is to eliminate the source, not whiff the 1/10th of 1% and congratulate yourself.
Spiritk9 on May 7, 2009 at 10:07 PM
This link with its telling graph comparison was posted at NRO’s “The Corner.” Young Barry will leave us all mired in poverty and defenseless.
onlineanalyst on May 7, 2009 at 10:40 PM
Cutting $17 billion out of $3.4 trillion is supposed to impress us?
That’s like saving a nickel when you’re spending $100.
Hammertime on May 7, 2009 at 11:46 PM
Maybe those people need to take some time off, take a vacation to America, and remember what they’re job is.
amkun on May 7, 2009 at 11:47 PM
they’re=their, but whatever.
amkun on May 7, 2009 at 11:48 PM
That’s like discounting Michelle Obama’s $540 tennis shoes by $2.50.
$537.50 is a TON of cash for tennis shoes!!
TN Mom on May 8, 2009 at 12:10 AM
This idiotic increase in the cost of energy by the democrats
is going to be especially damaging as other countries economies get going again,thus raising gas prices at the same time they are pushing for higher energy prices.
I hear the liberals rant on about how raising gas prices is beneficial because it makes people more disciplined in their energy consumption which makes it better for the environment.
How come this argument does not work for HEALTH CARE?
Why doesn’t allowing health care costs to rise make people want to take better care of their bodies and not abuse the health care system?
Is this just more idiotic liberal pretzel logic?
If getting “free” health care or drastically reduced rates is better for the populace and the economy, how come using our own resources and reducing or getting “free” energy is not just as beneficial to improving our living conditions.
Baxter Greene on May 8, 2009 at 12:23 AM
Noticed this in the spending cuts:
The democrats screamed like he!! about port security (but securing the boarders somehow did not matter) for years and now they are proposing to cut it.
This should get more attention.
Baxter Greene on May 8, 2009 at 12:27 AM
wow…way to be a budget warrior, barry.
therightwinger on May 8, 2009 at 12:28 AM
Maybe a little OT, but I went to a meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers last night in Boston, where they had a panel discussion touting the glories of solar and wind power, and how desperately (cough!) we need Cap&Trade, and how all the libs from Boston had to call Midwest Senators to tell them how horrible coal power was, and how they HAD to vote for Cap&Trade.
I publicly asked them a question about their approach toward nuclear power plants (which don’t emit CO2), but they hemmed and hawed and lamented “siting” problems where a company could spend billions designing a nuclear power plant, but have their plans cancelled by the whim of some State legislator. Wait a minute–if a company gets a State and Federal permit, isn’t that good enough?
They also lamented sending lots of petrodollars to foreign countries for oil imports, but then said that Cap&Trade would bring dollars to the American treasury. Maybe to the Government, but how does that reduce oil imports? We only get 3% of our electricity from oil, but we import it mostly for transportation and home-heating–do they want to cap and trade gasoline and home-heating oil–in effect rationing our driving and the temperature of our homes?
I also asked them a question about shale oil, since we have enough to last over 100 years of imports, in order to give ourselves more time to develop alternative energy. No, they said, you can’t do that, because you’ll cook the planet and have a Type II climate change where glaciers will melt so rapidly they’ll change the Gulf Stream, according to the IPCC, and sea levels might rise 60 cm (about two feet) in 100 years. The IPCC, the ones who wrote the conclusions before examining the data! Hmmm…couldn’t people build a sea-wall two feet high in 100 years? Is that so hard?
Except that the Greenland ice cap is growing thicker in the middle, and the East Antarctica ice cap is growing and getting colder, but no matter to the panelists. We’ve got to react to “global warming” like we did to Pearl Harbor, they say, and ration everything to save, not the free world, but ICE.
This is what we’re up against, and what they’re telling ENGINEERS, who should know better! Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail in the Senate, but you never know…
Steve Z on May 8, 2009 at 6:17 PM
What he didn’t say is billions spent/saved doesn’t mean anything to him since it’s not his money.
It’s all a game that he plays-he counts on the people that he speaks to to be completely stupid/uninformed of what he is really doing. These people listen to him but NEVER follow up to see if he performs
Keep them stupid and forward we march all over them.
From day one it’s been give me the very gullible and I will give them undefined hope & change.
Gulf Coast on May 8, 2009 at 6:28 PM
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