Obama's Spending Cuts. No, Really!
Though Barack Obama's promised "net spending cut" remains arguably the biggest of the president's campaign whoppers, the Washington Times is reporting that the White House has actually succeeded in trimming some federal programs:
President Obama notched substantial successes in spending cuts last year, winning 60 percent of his proposed cuts and managing to get Congress to ax several programs that had bedeviled President George W. Bush for years.
The administration says Congress accepted at least $6.9 billion of the $11.3 billion in discretionary spending cuts Mr. Obama proposed for the current fiscal year. An analysis by The Washington Times found that Mr. Obama was victorious in getting Congress to slash 24 programs and achieved some level of success in reducing nine other programs.
Among the president's victories are canceling the multibillion-dollar F-22 Raptor program, ending the LORAN-C radio-based ship navigation system and culling a series of low-dollar education grants. In each of those cases, Mr. Obama succeeded in eliminating programs that Mr. Bush repeatedly failed to end.
Not much evidence of a deep "analysis" at the link, though the newspaper did point out that the cuts "still account for well less than one-half of 1 percent of the total federal budget."
Link via Andrew Sullivan.
