Relentless Cuts Net 0.0025% In Savings

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Washington: The administration has fulfilled a promise to cut spending by trimming $100 million from the 2009 budget. That's right — $100 million with an "m," an imponderably small slice of this year's expenditures.

Back in April, the White House stressed that President Obama, during his first Cabinet meeting, "made clear that relentlessly cutting out waste was part and parcel of their mission to make the investments necessary for recovery and long-term stability." Department heads were "to identify at least $100 million in additional cuts to their administrative budgets."

Three months later, he has gotten his wish: The White House announced on Monday that the goal has been reached.

To say such a cut is negligible is an exaggeration in the extreme. To fit that description, a cut first has to be visible. Though it was initially promoted as a seminal moment, this cut doesn't come close to meeting even the most reachable of benchmarks.

In fiscal 2009, our federal government will spend nearly $4 trillion, according to the Office of Management and Budget's historical tables. The $100 million cut represents 0.0025% — less than one one-hundredth of 1% — of those outlays.

The cut is almost as piddling as a portion of the 2009 deficit, which the White House and Congress have already quadrupled in six months. It represents a little more than 0.005% of a shortfall that is itself staggering.

Now, thanks to the administration's "relentless" belt-tightening, the deficit will be $1.79999 trillion rather than $1.8 trillion.

For a little real-life perspective, consider the comparison drawn by Harvard economist Greg Mankiw, chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, when the $100 million goal was set in April.

Cutting that much to help close the deficit, Mankiw reckoned, is like a family that spends $100,000 a year trying to plug a $34,000 shortfall by buying one less latte a year.

In an April 21 editorial titled "Fiscal Nanosurgery," we did a few calculations of our own, finding that:

• If President Obama were your dietician, you'd have to give up an apple a year to abide by his diet plan.

• If he wanted you to cut your gasoline consumption, you'd have to drive just one-third of a mile less a year.

• And if he wanted you to waste less water, you'd have to reduce the time you spend in the shower on one day of the year by 30 seconds.

If Washington believes a $100 million cut amounts to much, then it has truly lost its sense of proportion. But then, its sense of proportion has been questionable in so many areas that the average citizen can't be blamed for just throwing up his hands.

Maybe when the White House starts trumpeting cuts of $100 billion, with a "b," we can feel confident that progress is being made. Until then, cuts of the size announced this week only highlight how inefficient and incompetent our government really is.

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