President Begins to Trim Budget

The president announced today that he plans to cut $17 billion out of the budget.  It’s great to see the president living up to his promise of scouring the budget “line by line” to make cuts.  It’s a start, but it is only a tiny fraction of the $3.4 trillion budget.  In fact, the cuts amount to one half of one percent of planned spending.  The White House says they are not done yet though, so hopefully we will see some more cuts soon.

Per capita income in the United States is about $45,800 a year.  If a family had to cut their spending by the same percentage that the president plans to cut the budget, then they would have to reduce spending by $229.  $17 billion is a significant amount of money even to the American government–about as significant as $229 is to the average American, but further cuts can certainly be made.  

Some projections show a $1.7 trillion deficit this year.  To continue the comparison to the average American, that’d be like spending $68,700 while earning $45,800, then when discussing how much to cut spending, only reducing it by $229 that year.  We couldn’t get by like that for long and we would have to cut more.  Hopefully the White House and Congress will want to continue what they’ve started and reduce the size of the budget dramatically before October when some of the money is slated to be spent.