Obama's Proposed Budget Cuts

Update: Video posted below. 

Obama will announce the cuts this morning at 10:35 eastern. You can check out the 2010 budget here.
Here's a list of the cuts from the White House:

The programs in Terminations, Reductions, and Savings are ones that do not accomplish the goals set for them, do not do so efficiently, or do a job already done by another initiative. They include these ten:

· LORAN-C ($35 million). This long-range, radio-navigation system has been made obsolete by GPS.

· Abandoned Mine Lands Payments ($142 million). This program now pays to clean up mines that have already been cleaned up.

· Educational attaché, Paris, France ($632,000). The Department of Education can use e-mail, video conferencing, and modest travel to replace a full-time representative to UNESCO in Paris, France.

· Los Alamos Neutron Science Center refurbishment ($19 million). The linear accelerator housed here was built 30 years ago and no longer plays a critical role in weapons research.

· Even Start ($66 million). The most recent evaluation found no difference between families in the program and those not in it across 38 of 41 outcomes. Strengthening early childhood education is accomplished through significant investments in proven, more effective programs such as Head Start, Early Head Start, and the Early Learning Challenge Fund.

· Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation ($1 million). Due to high overhead, the Foundation would spend only 20 percent of its 2010 appropriation on the fellowships it awards.

· Advanced Earned Income Tax Credit ($125 million). This program benefits very few taxpayers, and has an extremely high error rate: GAO found that 80 percent of recipients did not meet at least one of its requirements.

· Javits Gifted and Talented Education Program ($7 million). Grants from this program go to only 15 school districts nationwide, and there are no empirical measures to judge their efficacy.

· Public Broadcasting Grants ($5 million). USDA made these grants to support rural public broadcasting stations in their conversions to digital broadcasting. That transition is now almost complete.

· Rail Line Relocation Grants ($25 million). This program, duplicative of a merit-based program, is loaded with earmarks.

I find it fascinating that people are complaining that $17 billion isn't a lot of money. If you're going to be fiscally conservative, then everything is a big amount. Peter Orszag, budget director, explains that the big savings will come with healthcare reform:

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Why Should America Subsidize John Thain's New Mansion?

In examining Obama's budget, Left, Right & Center's moderator and center, Matt Miller, poses a compelling question:

Conservatives cry “class warfare.” But the truth is that current arrangements actually represent plunder from above (an enduring feature of America's tax history, as I show in this chapter of my book, The Tyranny of Dead Ideas). As a moment's reflection shows, the ability to enjoy more tax savings because you’re in a higher tax bracket is perverse; why should America subsidize John Thain’s mansion more than it subsidizes the average homeowner—or the average renter, for that matter, who gets no subsidy at all? As the GOP cries foul, I'd put Obama out in town-hall meetings to pose this question: “Why in America should a millionaire’s mortgage be worth more to him than yours is to you?” Plus, as Bob Greenstein of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorties cleverly points out, this takes the value of these deductions back to what they were under Ronald Reagan (when the top rate was 28 percent). Can the Gipper really not have been doing right by the top? Read more.

Of course, conservatives argue that the John Thains of the world are superior and deserving because they are the "job creators."

Check out a video of Bob Greenstein, who calls Obama's budget courageous, on NewsHour here. 

Greenstein points out that people who make over $1 million a year right now get a $150,000 tax cut, courtesy of Bush. Obama's budget lets Bush's tax cuts expire. It also adds an additional tax increase on the top 5% of Americans to help pay for healthcare, on top of Medicare savings, and it gets rid of tax loopholes that most corporations exploit.

Here's Obama's budget guy Peter Orszag discussing the budget.