More on Obama's Cost Cutting . . . and His Naivete

It is more than a little naive for our President to think that anyone would be impressed by the dictate to his Cabinent to cut out 0.0025% of the federal budget, which is what he did when he told them to cut $100 Million in spending. Did he somehow have the notion that he would receive praise for this? Does President Obama think that this figure, because it is on any objective scale, a lot of money, is meaningful to the federal government, in light of how much of your money they spend each year?

Let's put this figure into perspective. If your household income is $100,000, then your efforts to save 0.0025% would mean you would need to somehow, some way, scrimp and scrounge to find a way to trim . . . $2.50 from your spending. Do you think you could do that? Well, that's what President Obama has told his Cabinet to do.

And, in recognition of how difficult this is going to be, he gave them 90 DAYS TO FIGURE IT OUT!!! How about, "Get back to me by lunchtime, and get used to this because your budgets are going to be under close, close scrutiny."

Instead, his move sends exactly the wrong message, and it illustrates just how inexperienced and naive President Obama is. He has signalled to his Cabinet that he is not serious about cost cutting. That this is all a big charade to fool the taxpayers. This tells us that all he really wants to do is appear to be cost cutting, but that he doesn't actually want to cut anything meaningful.

All his campaign rhetoric about how there would be a new sheriff in town when it comes to spending, and how he is going to cut wasteful spending. Remember the figures he was talking about on the campaign trail, and in the debates? With all his cost cutting talk in the debates, he made John McCain look like a spendthrift, when that guy had the real credentials of standing up to government waste. Now, he is in office and this is what we get.

I think what this tells us is that President Obama is finding out that it is a lot harder to govern than to run for office. His big problem is going to be living up to the expectations his campaign rhetoric created. When people begin to understand that he didn't mean half of what he said . . . things will turn quickly.

The President has another, more serious, problem looming. The Democratic Congress is out of control. They are relishing their newfound power and they are locking out opposing viewpoints from determing public policy. This is a mistake of epic proportions. And, it will come back to haunt them in two ways. First, it will alienate the President, who is not really an idealogue. Unlike Pelosi, Durbin, Waxman and Reid, the President is not interested in fighting last decade's battle.

The second, more serious problem for Congress, is that with each move, they are creating a new constituency for the Republicans. In poker, this is called "over playing their hand", which can sometimes win in poker, but in politics, it is fatal. If they keep this up, it is only a matter of time (2010, 2012, 2014) before they lose their majority in one house. The reason is that the American People are not an idealogical People. We are pragmatists.

That's it for today . . .