President Obama announced today the details of his plan to slice $17 billion from the proposed $3.5 trillion 2010 budget.
The proposed budget cuts only account for about 0.5 per cent of the total 2010 approved spending, but Obama stressed that while this is true, this particular $17 billion can be put to much better use than it has been in Washington.
“There is a lot of money being spent inefficiently, ineffectively, and — in some cases — in ways that are actually pretty stunning,” Obama said, according to CNN Money. “To put this in perspective, this is more than enough savings to pay for a $2,500 tuition tax credit for millions of students as well as a larger Pell Grant — with enough money left over to pay for everything we do to protect the National Parks.”
Well, if you put it that way.
For those who don’t know, the Federal Pell Grant program provides low-income undergraduate and eligible postbaccalaureate students with grants to promote post-secondary education.
About $11.5 billion of the budget cut would come from programs that don’t receive automatic funding, and half of the total savings would come from non-defense related programs, CNN Money reports.
A senior official stressed that many of the proposed cuts are from duplicate programs or programs whose performance doesn’t justify the funding, like the early education program Even Start which would be cut if the plans are approved.
The biggest o‚ cuts on the budget reform fall under the defense umbrella, with $6.24 billion cut from recruiting and retention programs and nearly $6 billion cut from the development of manned ground and air vehicles, like the F-22 Raptor.
Routinely, defense spending accounts for 20% of the yearly budget.
The president promised many more budget cuts to come, CNN Money reports.
While the budget cut seems relatively tiny–okay, very tiny–Obama’s intentions to cut out those programs that have been spending money/resources unwisely and aid those programs that need it most are both good objectives. In fact, I wouldn’t mind if cut much more off the budget and gave to many more troubled organizations. Yet, a looming issue is that of the overall deficit and how we can possibly cut it down to half its current size–which is MUCH larger than $17 billion. It’s not even really fathomable. I trust in the President’s words, and to give him credit, he is at least moving in the correct direction. But it is going to take a lot more budget cutting before we are even minutely close. Personally, I am banking on the much-discussed health reforms. Until then, I’m standing by (with hope, of course). I watched an interesting video on this whole budget cut ordeal at newsy.com earlier today. The video does an excellent job of summarizing the facts and showing a few different opinions. It’s worth looking at:
http://www.newsy.com/videos/budget_cuts_a_drop_in_the_bucket/