Obama was going to watch every line item in the federal budget

Remember?

"When I am president, I will go line by line to make sure we are not spending money unwisely." (Watch the following debate footage at 3:37-3:43.)



Well, that hasn't happened.

But he is showing himself to be fiscally conservative.

Having proposed a $3.6 trillion budget for the next fiscal year, he has asked the members of his cabinet to find $100 million in savings.

I first read about that this morning and the commentator said $100 million was 15 minutes of federal spending.

Someone suggested a better way to think about it. If you make $50,000 a year and, therefore, have a $50,000 annual budget, you would need to find $1.39 in savings. (Calculated by dividing $100,000,000 by $3,600,000,000,000 and multiplying that fraction by $50,000.)

Maybe we should make that a bit more realistic, however.

The real corollary is a family whose income is $33,400 a year but needing to borrow $16,600 in order to meet all of its "needs."

And the dad makes the "hard" decision that the family will have to spend $1.39 less than that!

Or . . . to make it really simple: It's a family whose annual income is $24,000 ($2.4T), but plans to spend $36,000 ($3.6T). Oh. No. They will spend only $35,999 ($3.6T - $100M).

Are you impressed?

I didn't think you would be!

Nor am I.