Democratic Underground: John Boehner says Pentagon Should Be Part Of Spending Freeze

Rachel Slajda | February 1, 2010, 9:45AM

House Minority Leader John Boehner said Sunday that defense spending should not be exempt from President Obama's proposed spending freeze.

"I think the president's proposal on freezing non-security domestic spending is a good first step, but it's only $15 billion for each of the next three years," Boehner said on Meet The Press.

I think we can do much better than that. I don't think any agency of the federal government should be exempt from rooting out wasteful spending or unnecessary spending. 

And I, frankly, I would agree with it at the Pentagon. There's got to be wasteful spending there, unnecessary spending there. It all ought to be eliminated, and we should be going through this budget line by line and, and asking the question, is this spending worth having to borrow money that our kids and grandkids are going to have to pay back? 

That's the real question. And if we went through the budget line by line like that, I think there's a lot more spending that we could cut.

Obama has proposed freezing non-defense discretionary spending for the next three years, which should save $250 billion from the national deficit over the next 10 years, according to the New York Times. But the Pentagon -- as well as some non-defense areas such as the Department of Education, Medicaid and Medicare -- is exempt from the freeze.

Boehner apparently agrees with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who last week said the defense budget "should not be exempted" from the freeze.

Rightardia: The Major was involved in defense budgeting and knows billions could be cut from defense spending form little impact on the mission. One way to do this would be to stop the spending surge at the end of the fiscal year. If you don't spend your budget by the end of the year, you lose it and the accounting office pools all of the excess funds to so they can be spent before the end of the fiscal year. This practice should be discouraged. 

Of course, a lot of this end of year spending is rolled into local economics to purchase new office furniture, personal computers and office supplies using local purchase procedures. So changing this policy could be good news for American taxpayers, but bad news for the local economy that is near a defense facility.

Source: Talking Points Memo

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White House support of Middle Class Families in the 2011 budget

Having steered the economy back from the brink of a depression, the Administration is committed to moving the Nation from recession to recovery by sparking job creation to get millions of Americans back to work and building a new foundation for the long-term prosperity for all American families.

To do this, the 2011 Budget makes critical investments in the key areas that will help to reverse the decline in economic security that American families have experienced over the past decade with investments in education, clean energy, infrastructure, and innovation.

But even as we meet the challenge of the recession and work to build an economy that works for all American families, we must also change the way Washington does business – ending programs that don’t work, streamlining those that do, cracking down on special interest access, and bringing a new responsibility to how tax dollars are spent.

The President’s Budget takes the steps to help jumpstart job creation, works to strengthen the economic security of American families, and makes the tough choices to put our Nation back on the path to fiscal responsibility.

To support middle class families, the Budget will:

Spur Job Creation. The economy is back from the brink and is showing signs of health, but this positive news has barely been felt in the labor markets. While we are no longer hemorrhaging jobs at the rate we were last year, unemployment is still unacceptably high.

Looking to the future, the investments made in the Budget in education, clean energy, infrastructure, and in several other areas will lay a new foundation for economic growth and job creation. But in the short-term, it is clear that the some targeted measures are required to spur private sector job creation.

The Administration will work with Congress to implement a jobs creation package along the lines the President announced in December of 2009. It will include immediate steps to help small businesses grow and hire, to upgrade and build infrastructure, and create jobs through energy efficiency and clean energy investments. 

In addition, to help those most affected by the recession, the Budget will extend emergency assistance to seniors and families with children, Unemployment Insurance benefits, COBRA tax credits, and relief to states and localities to prevent layoffs.

The Road to Recovery

by Peter R. Orszag, Director

Today on Capitol Hill, OMB Deputy Director Rob Nabors testified in front of the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee about the Recovery Act.

A major focus at the hearing was a report issued today by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the non-partisan, independent government watchdog. GAO found that Recovery Act spending was ahead of schedule and was helping to mitigate the economic downturn.   

In its report, the GAO found: 

• In New York City, officials estimate that the Recovery Act funds saved 14,000 teachers’ jobs because the school district was able to use the dollars to avoid massive cutbacks in education programs.

• Michigan will use part of its Recovery funding to weatherize 32,000 homes, reducing energy usage in each home by an average of 25 percent, and employing an estimated 1,500 people.

• In California, state officials had been looking at increasing college tuition by 26 percent. The GAO reports, however, that, because of Recovery funds, any tuition hike will stay in the single digits.

These reports are good news, but it will take time for us to work our way out of the problems we face.

Let’s be clear: we haven’t swapped our propeller hats for rose-colored glasses. Although the pace of job losses has slowed significantly since the Administration took office — we shouldn’t forget that the economy was shedding an average of 691,000 jobs in January, February, and March — the June unemployment numbers are a stark reminder of how deep the economic downturn we face is and how much more work we have ahead of us.

Our current economic challenges were years in the making, and they will not be solved overnight. Nonetheless, we will be taking a close look at some of some of GAO’s constructive suggestions to improve Recovery Act implementation and effectiveness. And we’ll also continue our work to improve education, move toward a clean energy future, and reform health care, so that we have a new foundation for broad-based, sustainable economic growth.

source: White House blog

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