Obama's Planned Cuts May Prove Illusory

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Last week, I hosted a Washington Post discussion on the President’s plan to cut or eliminate 121 programs. There were a lot of great questions, but I think these two were particularly important:
 
New York, N.Y.: How much of the $17 billion in proposed cuts do you think President Obama will manage to get and how much political capital is he going to have to spend getting it?
 
Marc Goldwein That's a great question. If history is any indication, President Obama will have his work cut out for him.
 
During his presidency, Ronald Reagan -- who ran and won on shrinking government -- only succeeded in eliminating four major programs. His successor, George H.W. Bush proposed eliminating 246 very small programs in 1992 -- which would have saved less than $4 billion dollars. He only succeeded in getting rid of EIGHT of them -- including one to fund the Constitutional Bicentennial Commission, which was established for an event that already occurred 5 years earlier.
 
George W. Bush didn't see incredible amounts of success either. In his FY2006 budget, when all the stars were aligned perfectly (coming off an electoral victory with a big Republican majority and few new spending promises), he was able to cut or partially cut about 40% of the programs he proposed. For 2007 and 2008, it was less than 15%.
 
The bottom line is, every program has its own constituency ready to fight for its survival. $20 million is very little to the federal government, but it's an awful lot to a $30 million program. The President is really going to have to fight for some of these cuts.
 
The cruelest joke: $17B out of $3.4T is .005%.
 
Marc Goldwein: We're actually talking about around 0.5% of the budget, but your point stands. Even if President Obama gets all of these cuts, it just barely makes a dent in the overall budget deficit.
 
We have to remember first, that these cuts are about good government more than budgetary savings. They are about spending taxpayer money efficiently, not wasting it on redundant or ineffective programs.
 
To get real budgetary savings, the president and Congress are going to have to start making some tough choices. They are going to have to address tax policy. And most importantly, they need to find ways to get Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid spending under control.
 
Read the full discussion here.