Article

2010-02-01 Economy

Obama's $3.8 trillion budget heading to Congress

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by ed 2010-02-01 00:00|| || Front Page|| [1 views ] Top

#1 "Relax. We can always print more."

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2010-02-01 00:16|| 2010-02-01 00:16|| Front Page Top

#2 Now that we've POed the Chinese w/r to Military sales to Taiwan do you think they will buy our paper to cover this? Or will they have a "side agreement" for Øbama first?

Posted by tipover 2010-02-01 01:11|| 2010-02-01 01:11|| Front Page Top

#3 O-bummer, O-bummer, O-bummer ..... Get ready for Hyper-Inflation, nostalgic for the Carter years...Welcome Back Carter....bummer

Posted by Slager Fleans1500 2010-02-01 06:53|| 2010-02-01 06:53|| Front Page Top

#4 There is only one way to deal with this. We need to cut spending. Cuts to the programs that are causing this, Social Security, Medicare/caid and Defence. We should eliminate the COLAs from SS and MM and return, yes, return, to having Congress set the level of spending on these welfare programs. And there is no capacity for spending on them to go up.

Defence needs to have an ax taken to it also. Procurement spending on gold plated systems is out of control. There is no way we would procure systems so wastefully if we were at war.

Whatever is done to ther programs is window dressing. If we want to cut spending, we have to go where the big spending is and that's these three programs. We need to cut spending.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2010-02-01 07:05|| 2010-02-01 07:05|| Front Page Top

#5 Procurement spending on gold plated systems is out of control.

Technically, that would be Acquisition and R&D. DoD procurement is food, fuel, spare parts, etc, to keep the organization running. I remember well what happened when they really did cut procurement in the 70s. The phrase 'hollow Army' comes to mind.

Posted by Procopius2k 2010-02-01 08:58|| 2010-02-01 08:58|| Front Page Top

#6 Followed by the mass forced retirements of USAF personnel under Clinton. Which led pretty directly to the bumbling management of strategic nukes at Minot a few years later.

Technically, in budget speak what Procopius2k is saying is that food, fuel, salaries etc. are Operations and Maintenance budget lines, as opposed to early stage R&D to address capability gaps and then specific Programs of Record for systems in final development or manufacturing.

Which sounds like nitpicking until you realize that, for instance, under continuing budget resolutions O&M dollars are dribbled out to DOD but the other funding lines aren't. Which in turn can result in higher overall program costs if, say, manufacturing lines were shut down for 4 months.

It's a bit more complicated than this, even, since different budget lines are authorized to spend monies across different spans of fiscal years. But it's too early in the day to bore y'all to sleep with the details ... ;-)

Posted by lotp 2010-02-01 13:32|| 2010-02-01 13:32|| Front Page Top

#7 I stand corrected, P2K. O & M is not what we should be going after, but the programs like the DD-1000, Ford, and F-35 that have become out of control spending vehicles to build weapons to fight enemies that have been defeated for 20 years. The Soviet Union is dead. Why are we building these systems when we are sending people into combat with rifles designed 50 years ago? The waste is enormous and should not be tolerated in wartime.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2010-02-01 13:45|| 2010-02-01 13:45|| Front Page Top

#8 Poor comparison, Nimble; a modern rifle wouldn't cost any more than the heavily modified (with sights and such) M-16's the army currently uses; but the army doesn't seem to want to admit that the M-16 has shortcomings to begin with.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2010-02-01 13:49|| 2010-02-01 13:49|| Front Page Top

#9 The Free Lunch Party still appears to be firmly in control of all branches of government.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2010-02-01 13:52|| 2010-02-01 13:52|| Front Page Top

#10 So - how much in cuts to entitlements?

Posted by CrazyFool 2010-02-01 15:23|| 2010-02-01 15:23|| Front Page Top

#11 "So - how much in cuts to entitlements?"

Zero, of course.

Silly CF. ;-p

Posted by Barbara Skolaut 2010-02-01 15:26|| 2010-02-01 15:26|| Front Page Top

#12 Max Boot on defense needs vs. defense spending

Posted by lotp 2010-02-01 16:55|| 2010-02-01 16:55|| Front Page Top

#13 FOX NEWS AM > US Debt percentage under POTUS Bammer's budget plan will rise to 77% of US GDP by 2020, from curr 53%???

* CHINESE MIL FORUM > OBAMA UNVEILS 2011 BUDGET WITH US$3.83 TRILYUHN IN SPENDING | 40% OF NEXT YEAR'S [2011] FEDERAL BUDGET IS DEFICIT.

Posted by JosephMendiola 2010-02-01 20:04|| 2010-02-01 20:04|| Front Page Top

#14 "National misery" > Yup, DEEP + PROTRACTIVE.

Lest we fergit, MSM-NET PERTS > US-GLOBAL RECESSION [DEPRESSION?] will last DECADES, SCORES OF YEARS LONGER ["Score" = 20 Years ea.]than the original "Great Depression" experienced by our Parents and prior Ancestors-in-Precedence.

For a ANTHROPOGENIC "MAN-AND-ONLY-MAN-IS-THE- CAUSE" GLOBAL WARMING/CLIMATE CHANGE [MSM-Net "Hoax"?] + OWG-NWO + "RISE OF THE REST OF THE WORLD", ..................@ETC. that

To wit,

* AFAIK No Amer has yet formally voted for - Locally andor Nationally.

* IMHB Few iff any Amer Politicians wants to describe in detail to their electoral Constituents iff they had a choice.

Posted by JosephMendiola 2010-02-01 20:20|| 2010-02-01 20:20|| Front Page Top

#15 The good news today for Amerika, the mighty USSA = weak anti-sovereign United Socialist Republiks of Amerika OWG SSR, is that despite its econmoy contarcting EIGHT PERCENT in 2009, RUSS MEDVEDEV = VLADVEDEV wants to revive the Cold War SOVIET WARTIME COMMAND-AND-CONTROL SYSTEM FOR SMOOTH POST-SOVIET RUSS "C4I".

Posted by JosephMendiola 2010-02-01 20:26|| 2010-02-01 20:26|| Front Page Top

#16 Zero, of course.

Less actually. Annual increases in entitlement spending are (nearly?) completely the product of existing legal mandates that no one is proposing to change. At least not yet. Slash defense but welfare grows automatically. Yeah, that'll work out well for us.

Posted by AzCat 2010-02-01 22:27|| 2010-02-01 22:27|| Front Page Top

23:59 Skidmark
23:55 Secret Master
23:42 USN, Ret.
23:31 USN, Ret.
23:31 mom
23:27 USN, Ret.
22:27 AzCat
22:22 Thraque Lumplump3601
22:21 AzCat
22:15 Asymmetrical Triangulation
22:07 KBK
22:05 trailing wife
21:54 Dar
21:48 Asymmetrical Triangulation
21:45 KBK
21:40 crosspatch
21:39 badanov
21:32 Barbara Skolaut
21:25 Anonymoose
21:22 Shomp Oppressor of the Antelope3652
21:05 Shomp Oppressor of the Antelope3652
21:02 Procopius2k
20:59 Asymmetrical Triangulation
20:55 JosephMendiola