The President Pays Lip Service to Fiscal Responsibility

Throughout the never ending stream of endless new spending both proposed and enacted by the president, we continue to hear that he also plans on getting our fiscal house in order. Many of us have been very skeptical of this promise. After all, it's hard to square someone that proposed a near $1 trillion stimulus, $250 billion for a mortgage bailout, an omnibus with nearly 8000 earmarks, and finally a budget that's worth nearly $4 trillion with someone that will get our fiscal house in order.

Yet, over and over, we have heard that the president will go "line by line" and cut "waste without prejudice". Well, this morning we saw just how "serious" he is about all of this.

From going paperless to eliminating multimillion-dollar contracts for companies that create logos, Cabinet agencies are laying out a number of ways they can meet President Obama's call to slash $100 million from the federal budget.

The president held his first Cabinet meeting Monday morning and ordered his department heads to draft ways to trim the federal fat.

The $100 million figure represents a drop in the bucket of the president's $3.5 trillion budget proposal, and would do little to erase the more than $1.2 trillion deficit that has become the rallying cry of fiscal conservatives.

But the White House released a list of cost-cutting measures Monday that marked a start to what Obama pledges will be long-term fiscal responsibility.

To add insult to injury to the lip service the president is paying to fiscal responsibility, he added this.

If we're going to rebuild our economy on a solid foundation, we need to change the way we do business in Washington. We need to restore the American people's confidence in their government -- that it is on their side, spending their money wisely, to meet their families' needs,

The president has proposed nearly $10 trillion in new spending and now he thinks he is the model of fiscal responsibility because he has proposed cuts equal to $100 million. Frankly, that's sort of like a school teacher buying a Ferrari on credit while maintaining that they were fiscally responsible because they decided against the upgraded stereo system.

For the president to make these cuts news is the height of insult and patronizing nonsense. First, he proposes $10 trillion in new spending, then he cuts $100 million, and he has the nerve to say the federal government is sacrificing like the rest of us. He has just run an assault to increase the federal government exponentially, and he thinks by proposing $100 million in cuts, he is "sacrificing like the rest of us". That's just plain insulting.