Obama Budget "Savings"

The $17 billion in budget “savings” proudly announced by the administration amounts to roughly 0.5% of the more than $3.5 trillion in spending approved for next year by the Obama Administration. $17 billion in additional budget cuts for the coming fiscal year – this is the sum of Mr. Obama’s promised “line by line” scrubbing of the federal budget.
“This is a product of going through the budget line-by-line,” as Mr. Obama promised since his presidential campaign, said Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff. “It’s a constant, cumulative effort on this front to find savings and find reductions.”
The $17 billion would be saved through terminating or reducing 121 federal programs, ranging from just $632,000 to eliminate the post of an attaché for the Education Department in the American embassy in Paris to $142 million for cleaning up abandoned mines … of course, they also include, as pointed out in a USA Today report, "Federal programs deemed ineffective by President Obama and targeted for elimination in his proposed budget include five that stand to get about $500 million in economic stimulus funds, documents show." !! Obama givith and taketh away - LOL!
In January …The Obama administration asked the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff to cut the Pentagon's budget request for the fiscal year 2010 by more than 10 percent -- about $55 billion. More than half of the $17 billion “savings” administration officials say will come from defense programs! The Washington Times reports Obama "has targeted the Department of Defense to absorb more than 80 percent of the cuts he has proposed in next year's budget for discretionary programs." The Defense Department "will take a $9.4 billion hit, constituting 82 percent of the cuts." Among Mr. Gates’ targets as part of the “savings” are future staffing of the forces, missile defense programs, the Army’s Future Combat Systems, Navy shipbuilding, and the advanced F-22 fighter jets. More specifically, the cuts include: Recruiting and retention adjustments: $6.24 billion; Future combat systems of manned ground vehicles: $2.98 billion; F-22 raptor fighter aircraft: $2.9 billion; Transformational satellite: $768 million; Joint strike fighter alternate engine: $465 million.

Remember, all this $17 billion in budget savings accounts for ONLY 0.5% of the more than $3.5 trillion in spending approved for next year by the Obama Administration!