[PAA-Discuss] Obama Taps Spending Watchdog, Eyes Social Security

[robert]

And...what do you think he is actually going to do?   I predict that just
like the Gaza Massacre there will be a lot of words..and then some more
words and then there will be no sound and the stupid American
public(including people on this list) will be satisfied and things will go
on as usual.....no one will be held accountable.  What operates here is that
"force works"  and the more violent the better because that is what the
poltical elite  (Neo-Cons, Neo-Zionist, AIPAC) believe.  We must submit to
Jewish supremacist ideology or die.   

 

  _____  

From: discuss-bounces at paa-tx.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at paa-tx.org] On
Behalf Of BART BOYCE
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 10:23 AM
To: graham2639 at mindspring.com; PAA discussion
Subject: Re: [PAA-Discuss] Obama Taps Spending Watchdog, Eyes Social
Security

 


Thank you Kris ,

The War based economy is central to most all our problems today 
in my admittedly limited weltanschauung .
"anything War can do , Peace can do better."
hope you and Ron might be at PAA tonight .
PAA relishes your keen imput !
b

--- On Thu, 1/8/09, Ron and Kris Graham <graham2639 at mindspring.com> wrote:

From: Ron and Kris Graham <graham2639 at mindspring.com>
Subject: Obama Taps Spending Watchdog, Eyes Social Security
To: "Ron and Kris Graham" <graham2639 at mindspring.com>
Date: Thursday, January 8, 2009, 10:09 AM

Obama should strongly consider closing all U.S. military bases on foreign
soil and ending the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan . He should also
slash the bloated military budget by at least 90%. I don't think he'll do
any of those things. We are not defending ourselves against anybody. We have
been conducting offensive wars for years now. Let's face it the U.S. economy
is a war based economy. Until the U.S. government stops spending taxpayer
monies on wars and bailouts, the U.S. budget will never be balanced. Obama
would rather eyeball federal social programs like Social Security and
Medicare for cuts rather than cutting the military budget. What more can one
expect from a neoliberal war hawk who has stated that the Iraq "war" was a
dumb war and the "war" in Afghanistan is the "right war"?

 

Kris

 

 <http://www.truthout.org/010809O> http://www.truthout.org/010809O

 


 <http://www.truthout.org/010809O> Obama Taps Spending Watchdog, Eyes Social
Security


Thursday 08 January 2009

    Washington - Pointing with concern to "red ink as far as the eye can
see," President-elect Barack Obama pledged Wednesday to tackle
out-of-control Social Security and Medicare spending and named a special
watchdog to clamp down on other federal programs - even as he campaigned
anew to spend the largest pile of taxpayer money in history to revive the
sinking economy.

    The steepness of the fiscal mountain he'll face beginning Jan. 20 was
underscored by stunning new figures: an estimate that the federal budget
deficit will reach $1.2 trillion this year, by far the biggest ever, even
without the new stimulus spending.

    The incoming president has walked this same tightrope each day this week
- advocating fiscal discipline and taxpayer largesse together at nearly
every turn, though in every case with little detail to back it up. With less
than two weeks to go before taking the helm at the White House, he'll make
the same pitch on Thursday, delivering a speech laying out why he wants
Congress to quickly pass his still-evolving economic plan.

    Last year's U.S. deficit set its own record, but that $455 billion will
be dwarfed by this year's. The new estimate, by the nonpartisan
Congressional Budget Office, represents more than 8 percent of the entire
national economy.

    Still, Obama said "an economic situation that is dire" requires
immediate and bold action with unprecedented tax cuts and federal programs.
More bad news is expected Thursday and Friday on U.S. layoffs, and stocks
plummeted anew on Wednesday, wiping out gains from the first week of the new
year.

    Obama gave his first ballpark estimate of the total amount of the
stimulus package expected to emerge from negotiations between his team and
Capitol Hill, saying it is likely to hover around $775 billion over two
years. That's about $400 billion less than outside economists have said
might be needed to jolt the economy but at the top of the range that Obama
aides and congressional leaders have discussed publicly.

    "We're going to have to jump-start this economy," Obama said. "That's
going to cost some money."

    The president-elect said concerns about increasing the deficit to
unmanageable levels swayed him against the higher figures advocated by some.

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also pressed for passage of a recovery bill,
though the mid-February timeline she offered represented another slip in the
date by which the package would be ready for Obama's signature. Initially,
the goal was to have it finished by the time he takes office a week from
next Tuesday.

    Obama's repeated emphasis amid the stimulus talk on a need for spending
control is aimed in part at attracting more support from deficit hawks in
Congress.

    He said Wednesday, without details, that his initial budget proposal
next month will include "some very specific outlines" of how he plans to
tackle spending. That extends to the ballooning and so-far unsolvable fiscal
problem presented by the Social Security and Medicare programs, which Obama
promised would be "a central part" of his deficit-reduction plan.

    The stimulus package is expected to easily pass Congress, now controlled
by solid Democratic majorities in both houses. But since it is the first
major legislative test of an administration that promised to usher in a new
era of bipartisan cooperation, and a measure of such enormous scope and
import, Obama doesn't want to see it approved on a merely party-line vote.

    On Wednesday, he made good on a campaign promise and introduced his
choice for a new White House post he is creating: chief performance officer.
Nancy Killefer, a professional efficiency expert, is charged with scouring
the federal budget to eliminate programs that don't work and improve those
that do. Obama called her appointment "among the most important that I will
make."

    "We committed to changing the way our government in Washington does
business so that we're no longer squandering billions of tax dollars on
programs that have outlived their usefulness or exist solely because of the
power of a lobbyist or an interest group,"

    Killefer, the director of a management consulting firm and a former
assistant treasury secretary will be Obama's hatchet woman, with power to
recommend directly to him the slashing of programs and projects
government-wide. She'll help agencies set performance standards and hold
managers accountable.

    But she also will run up against a long history of other chief
executives' similar promises under different titles that have fallen short.

    She said the bureaucracy's entrenched problems have taken decades to
develop and will take time to fix. But she said it would be different this
time. "I have seen it done," Killefer said at Obama's side.

    Obama has to give Congress in early February a budget request - at least
the bare bones of one - covering spending for the next fiscal year. Because
that's so soon after he takes over the executive branch of government, his
submission won't be anything like the usual one that fills several volumes
and hundreds of pages.

    Pelosi, speaking before the House Democratic Steering and Policy
Committee, offered her own assurance that the stimulus plan would be
responsible and that Democrats are committed to long-term fiscal discipline.

    Economist Martin Feldstein joined others talking to the congressional
panel to endorse the need for a big short-term spending package. But he also
warned against anything that could create a spending habit and swell the
deficit even further. "There should be an exit strategy," he said.

    For all the talk of belt-tightening, minority Republican leaders sounded
only cautiously optimistic.

    "We cannot borrow and spend our way back to prosperity when we're
already running an annual deficit of more than one trillion dollars," House
Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said. "I was pleased to hear the
president-elect say yesterday that we need to stop just talking about our
national debt and actively confront it."

 

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