Peter Orszag is Obama's former director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. He's now writing for the NYT:
The nation faces a nasty dual deficit problem: a painful jobs deficit in the near term and an unsustainable budget deficit over the medium and long term. This month, the Senate will be debating an issue with significant implications for both — what to do about the Bush-era tax cuts scheduled to expire at the end of the year.
In the face of the dueling deficits, the best approach is a compromise: extend the tax cuts for two years and then end them altogether. Ideally only the middle-class tax cuts would be continued for now. Getting a deal in Congress, though, may require keeping the high-income tax cuts, too. And that would still be worth it.
Why does this combination make sense? The answer is that over the medium term, the tax cuts are simply not affordable. Yet no one wants to make an already stagnating jobs market worse over the next year or two, which is exactly what would happen if the cuts expire as planned. Read more at NYT
Obama announced Jacob Lew as his nominee to replace Peter Orszag, who resigned to retain his sanity. Obama also announces that three republicans--Scott Brown, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins (the only three who work with the Obama administration)--have signaled that they will vote for Wall Street reforms.
The Deepwater Horizon explosion and BP oil spill presents us with challenges on a number of fronts – from capping the flow at the well head and containing the spill on the ocean’s surface, to controlling the impact of the oil on the coastal shoreline and on the precious wetlands and fisheries in the area. President Obama remains committed to bringing any and all available resources to the Gulf of Mexico. Earlier today the President met with a number of Cabinet members and senior staff in the White House Situation Room to review BP’s efforts to stop the oil leak as well as to decide on next steps to ensure all is being done to contain the spread, mitigate the environmental impact and provide assistance to affected states, including individuals, businesses, and communities.
As we continue to evaluate different options to stop the flow of oil, the President impressed upon his team two things in the meeting today: first, the importance of engaging independent experts in the fields of science and technology; and, second, bringing every perspective to the table to identify potential solutions.
The President was pleased to hear that some of Energy Secretary Chu’s ideas have helped us better understand the dimensions of this serious problem and he asked Secretary Chu to lead a team of top administration officials and government scientists to Houston this week for an extensive dialogue with BP officials to continue to aggressively pursue potential solutions. Throughout the week, the President will continue to dispatch additional Cabinet officials to the region. As the President has made clear before, BP will be paying for all costs of stopping the spill and cleaning it up, and we will aggressively pursue full compensation for damages.
In addition, to deal more generally with the harms created by oil spills, the President has requested that we send legislation to Congress to toughen and update the law surrounding caps on damages.
The principals participating in the meeting included:
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano United States Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen (National Incident Commander for this event) Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen Department of Defense Secretary Robert Gates White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel Assistant to the President for Homeland Security John Brennan National Security Advisor General Jim Jones EPA Deputy Administrator Bob Perciasepe (Administrator Jackson is currently in Louisiana) NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change Carol Browner OMB Director Peter Orszag Assistant to the President for Science and Technology John Holdren DPC Chair Melody Barnes CEQ Chair Nancy Sutley Assistant to the President for Cabinet Affairs Chris Lu
Watch Obama speak about the budget here. Peter Orszag says health reform must get done in order to reduce costs. Without reform, the nation faces long-term deficits.
What's the higher priority: jobs or deficit. And the answer is: jobs, at least for the short term.
Q Has he chosen the need to fight the recession to create jobs as a higher priority than fighting the deficit?
MR. GIBBS: In the short term, absolutely. We have to get our economy moving again because one of the reasons that we've seen the budget deficit grow is that the economy has slowed down. We all know the extraordinary measures that had to be put in place in order to jumpstart the economy and we've seen some of the impacts of that as recently as Friday, with increased numbers in economic growth.
The President, as you heard in the State of the Union and throughout the first year, discuss the need and the necessity to get that economy moving again, and then to transition to address our mid- and long-term fiscal challenges.
I think many of the proposals the President outlines in here we have discussed -- non-security discretionary spending freeze; the President has supported and Congress thankfully passed last week a reinstitution of I think very simple commonsense rules that -- for pay as you go, that if we're going to spend money we're going to have to pay for it -- rules that were absent for a decent part of the last decade in which we saw deficits and debts skyrocket.
Read the fiscal year (which begins in Oct.) 2011 $3.8 trillion budget here or here. Peter Orszag and Christina Romer breakdown budget details here. NYT: Obama isn't giving up on healthcare and the budget backs him up:
President Obama says he has not given up on major health care legislation, and his new budget backs him up. The $3.8 trillion budget released by the White House on Monday includes $150 billion in deficit reduction over 10 years on the presumption that a health care bill will be adopted.
Here's an idea, the nation's budget should be required reading for school kids (and for adults). Kids could learn a lot about budgeting and finances and would be better prepared to understand these things as an adult. I plan to pick over this budget later on today.
Announcing his budget for the year, President Obama defends his spending proposals by saying "the previous administration and previous Congress" created a $1.3 trillion deficit that greeted him when he took office. Flanked by Christina Romer, the head of the Council of Economic Advisers; Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner; budget director Peter Orszag; and Larry Summers, his chief economic adviser, Obama chides the "failure to rein in spending as well as a reliance on borrowing, from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street, to fuel our growth."
"That’s what we have to change," he says. (10:45 a.m.)
Obama warns: "We won't be able to bring down this deficit overnight." He says his budget has tax cuts for investments in small businesses, tax credits for small-business hiring and other tax incentives for repairing roads and bridges and retrofitting homes.
Highlighting the need to curb spending, his proposed education investment and discretionary spending freeze, Obama says they are "the investments we must make." Read more at Politico
From Peter Orszag:
Today, the President transmitted the FY 2011 Budget to the Congress. In about an hour, he will deliver remarks about the Budget, and after that I will be taking questions from the press with CEA Chair Romer. This post gives readers of OMBlog a brief overview of the document.
After a year in which we took immediate and unprecedented action to rescue the economy from the brink of a second Great Depression, the FY 2011 Budget takes steps to jumpstart job creation, strengthen the economic security of middle-class families, and make the tough choices to put our Nation back on the path to fiscal sustainability.
When the President took office, the economy was on the brink of a depression. The economic crisis required that we take immediate and extraordinary steps to prevent a complete economic collapse that would have caused millions more to lose their jobs. Not all of the efforts we undertook to avoid a deeper recession were popular. Nonetheless the President did what was right for our country’s future: signing into law the Recovery Act to jumpstart economic growth and taking steps to prevent the collapse of the financial system.
A year later, the economy is back from the brink – and is growing again. This "statistical recovery," however, is cold comfort for the millions of Americans who have lost their job. The President has therefore called for a package to spur job creation now – including small business tax cuts and investments in clean energy and infrastructure.
To sustain job creation and economic growth into the years ahead and provide room for the private sector to expand, we are also making tough choices in the Budget: cutting what doesn’t work or isn’t necessary and investing in what will help to expand the economy and employment in the coming years.
The Budget thus institutes a three-year non-security discretionary freeze that will save $250 billion over the next decade. We're not putting forward an across-the-board freeze, but rather an overall cap on non-security discretionary funding in which key investments are expanded but we cut back on programs that are ineffective, duplicative, or just wasteful. As part of that overall effort, we identified more than 120 programs across the government that should be terminated or reduced – generating $20 billion in savings. Read more
Obama will speak on the budget at 10:45 am eastern. It will be live streamed at WhiteHouse.gov. The budget (see it here) boosts education and research and development. NASA's budget goes up, but the moon and mars program are cancelled in the budget.
At this point, I'm hoping they don't just pass a lame bill for political reasons.
“My assessment at this point,” said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and a member of the Finance Committee, “is that the legislation is heavy on health and light on reform.”
There are a variety of ideas for attacking cost increases more aggressively, including setting Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors and hospitals more rigorously and discouraging workers and employers from buying expensive health insurance policies that mask the true costs of treatment. NYT
See Wyden's idea for healthcare here. Under his plan (I have no idea why it hasn't been considered, but it probably has to do with this), we wouldn't get insurance from employers, but there would be a tradeoff of paying slightly more for guaranteed, comprehensive coverage:
According to that independent analysis, families who have incomes under $40,000 a year will have less out-of-pocket expenses under the HAA than they do now.
Families between $40,000 and $50,000 would pay about $81/year more - about $7 a month. Families between $50,000 and $150,000 would average between $327 and $341 per year more - about $28 a month.
In return for this modest increase these families would have guaranteed coverage that they could never lose, not if they get sick, not if they lose their jobs, not for any reason. This guaranteed coverage would be more comprehensive and include prevention benefits that would help you and your family improve their health. This new coverage would be fully portable - no longer would you need to stay in a job that paid less, or offered less opportunity, just to maintain health coverage. No longer would a parent need to work hours when they needed to be with their children just to maintain full time status for their health insurance.
Two camps at the White House:
The debate underscores a fundamental tension inside the White House between cost-containment idealists and pragmatists.
The first group includes officials like Peter R. Orszag, the budget director, and Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, the medical ethicist whose brother Rahm is the chief of staff. The second includes Rahm Emanuel and Nancy-Ann DeParle, the director of the Office of Health Reform, who must contend with the realities of getting legislation passed. Read more at NYT
The Senate Finance Committee legislation to revamp the health care system would provide coverage to 29 million uninsured Americans but would still pare future federal deficits by slowing the growth of spending on medical care, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.
The much-anticipated cost analysis showed the bill meeting President Obama’s main requirements, including his demand that health legislation not add “one dime to the deficit.” Indeed, the budget office said, the bill would reduce deficits by a total of $81 billion in the decade starting next year.
The report clears the way for the Finance Committee chairman, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, to push for a panel vote within the next few days, and sets the stage for Democrats to take legislation to the floor for debate by the full Senate this month.
Despite the expansion of coverage at a cost of $829 billion over 10 years, the budget office said 25 million people — about one-third of them illegal immigrants — would still be uninsured in 2019. In all, it said, the proportion of nonelderly Americans with insurance would rise over the 10 years to 94 percent, from 83 percent today. Republicans, who are overwhelmingly opposed to the legislation, minimized the significance of the cost analysis. They suggested that the “real” bill would be written secretly by Democratic leaders as they combine the Finance Committee measure with a version approved by the Senate health committee in July. Read more at the NYT
The White House calls it an important step. Eric Cantor puts on his whiny voice and says Americans have rejected the public option:
Peter Orszag, Christina Romer, Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner, Jared Bernstein
An inside look at Obama's economic team and a close-up on Larry Summers (loathed by the left) in the New Yorker's money issue:
In early August, Lawrence H. Summers, President Barack Obama’s top economic adviser, accompanied Vice-President Joseph Biden aboard Air Force Two on a trip to Detroit. Michigan has a fifteen-per-cent unemployment rate, the highest in America, and Detroit has become virtually a ward of the federal government: the United States now owns ten per cent of Chrysler and sixty-one per cent of General Motors. The purpose of Biden’s trip was to announce an additional $2.4 billion in federal grants, to help jump-start the electric-car industry; more than a billion will go to battery and auto manufacturers in Michigan. Summers, who is the director of the National Economic Council, the White House office that coördinates all economic policy in the Obama Administration, has rarely travelled outside Washington this year, and was in Detroit on a fact-finding mission. After nearly a year of debate about how much federal intervention was needed to beat back the recession—a debate that started during the end of the Presidential campaign—he was somewhat optimistic. The principal measures that Obama had taken—implementing the stimulus package, rescuing the banks, restructuring the automakers—had begun to stabilize the economy. In a speech three weeks earlier, Summers had put it this way: “We were at the brink of catastrophe at the beginning of the year, but we have walked some substantial distance back from the abyss.” It seemed like a good moment to check in on the government’s investments in Michigan.
Summers reminds me of record producer Rick Rubin, who often sleeps to produce. Summers catching a few winks:
Summers looked exhausted. The previous day, he hadn’t left the White House until after midnight, and he was up at dawn to make the flight to Detroit. As Granholm talked about layoffs, he eyed a bottle of soda on the table in front of her. Summers drinks many Diet Cokes a day, and he was badly in need of one. He got up, his shirttails peeking out from underneath his jacket, and shuffled over to a counter at the side of the room in search of a caffeinated beverage. All he found was an empty glass, which he carried back to his seat. The manufacturers took turns explaining their plight. Wes Smith, of E. & E. Manufacturing, argued that although the public hates bailouts, “helping manufacturing is popular.” An executive from Atlas Technologies quoted Jeffrey Immelt, the head of G.E., who had recently said that manufacturing jobs should make up twenty per cent of total employment in the United States—twice what it is now. Several of the participants argued that the bank bailouts hadn’t revived lending in their industry, so the government needed to intervene. Ned Staebler, one of Granholm’s top economic advisers, explained excitedly that the new assistance program for struggling companies had already approved its first loan even though he hadn’t advertised the program. As they spoke, Summers caught Granholm’s attention and mimed a request for some of her soda. She moved the bottle closer to him, smiling. He drank quickly, but it didn’t help. He shifted his weight in his chair. He made jerky, shaking motions with his head. He ran a hand through his hair. Still, by the time Mario Sciberras, of Saline Lectronics, was speaking about what he would do with one of the new loans, Summers was asleep. Read more at the New Yorker
Obama's slide in the polls is likely the result of liberals thinking Obama was something that he wasn't. (Here is a story that says the Obama slide is because moderates misread Obama). Now liberals are applying pressure to get Obama to do what they want him to do because they feel as though they are the only ones who supported him. They feel owed because they got him elected. Like any group, people want what they want. They think they're right. Just like the conservatives.
The so-called Obama Slide could also be caused by the fact that Obama has accomplished much in such a short period of time, people are demanding a lot. They're tightening the screws, so to speak. When was it that a president held a town hall, let alone the number that Obama has held? Obama has been here, there and everywhere, explaining, explaining, explaining. The more Obama communicates, the more people demand. It doesn't help that the Bush administration left the country a shambles and that few understand the economics of the bank "bailout."
I think support could turn around if Obama comes out forcefully for a public option, something that liberals are demanding. But is that the right thing to do? I'm on the fence. David Brooks thinks it would be suicide. He says Obama's sliding because he's losing the center:
Amazingly, some liberals are now lashing out at Obama because the entire country doesn’t agree with The Huffington Post. Some now argue that the administration should just ignore the ignorant masses and ram health care through using reconciliation, the legislative maneuver that would reduce the need for moderate votes.
This would be suicidal. You can’t pass the most important domestic reform in a generation when the majority of voters think you are on the wrong path. To do so would be a sign of unmitigated arrogance. If Obama agrees to use reconciliation, he will permanently affix himself to the liberal wing of his party and permanently alienate independents. He will be president of 35 percent of the country — and good luck getting anything done after that.
The second liberal response has been to attack the budget director, Peter Orszag. It was a mistake to put cost control at the center of the health reform sales job, many now argue. The president shouldn’t worry about the deficit. Just pass the spending parts.
As Obama's presidency progresses into its third and fourth years, I predict he'll be in great standing. Obama likes to say he's slow to start and then picks up speed. He's a thinker and a weigher of options and a tryer of new things.
Another problem for Obama has been the rightwing, which is absolutely flailing around. The nation is changing underneath their feet, progressing. Obama is a reminder of that. But they don't know what to do with all the change. Brooks' remedy for the slide:
But fiscal restraint is now the animating issue for moderate Americans. To take the looming $9 trillion in debt and balloon it further would be to enrage a giant part of the electorate.
This is a country that has always been suspicious of centralized government. This is a country that has just lived through an economic trauma caused by excessive spending and debt. Most Americans still admire Obama and want him to succeed. But if he doesn’t proceed in a manner consistent with the spirit of the nation and the times, voters will find a way to stop him. Read the whole thing at NYT
Rachel Maddow says Obama picked a really hard issue to tackle in his first year and that it's time to end bipartisanship on health reform. But is it even possible for democrats to pass health reform through the controversial "reconciliation" process?:
Somehow, Obama has to put politics aside, cut through the noise, and figure out what's the best move for the country on a number of fronts.
John King: is August still the goal or the president's insistence? I say: Does it matter? You can't get anything done without setting a deadline. This is just tired media questioning.
California is a train wreck. Chooooo Chooo. Orszag says the budget office is monitoring California's crisis. Other states are suffering as well, he said.
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.
· 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:
At 6 in the morning, Peter R. Orszag is racing: across wet pavement for a 35-minute run, into a shower and a suit, and through a living room that looks rather like an office, the walls painted presidential gold and hung with pictures of federal monuments.
As he heads to his job as White House budget director, he already seems to pulse with energy, but he asks his driver to stop at Starbucks for enormous doses of iced and hot tea. His epic caffeine intake concerned him until he solved the problem with typical Orszagian efficiency: he underwent genetic testing, confirmed that he could safely metabolize large amounts and happily moved on to the next worry.
Mr. Orszag is the youngest member of President Obama’s team holding cabinet rank, a 40-year-old with what colleagues call a graybeard’s knowledge of how the government spends money. But he has little interest in merely keeping fiscal house.
...........
“When people are saying this is not how O.M.B. has done things before, I’ve been shrugging my shoulders and saying this is not your father’s O.M.B.,” he said in a recent interview in his office, where a direct phone line to the president was just installed. (He has not yet dared press the little blue button.)
.........
“He’s made nerdy sexy,” said Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff.
..........When Rahm said that I bet he was giggling.
Mr. Orszag still plays the geek, passing out propeller hats and jokingly referring to himself as “supernerd.” But nerds are socially inept, and he is anything but. He has worked in Washington on and off since he was 17 — he interned under Pete Rouse, now a senior adviser to the president — and he has intensely political instincts and aspirations.
.......
Asked about his relationship with Mr. Summers, Mr. Orszag answered politely but stiffened visibly. The two have managed to work together congenially, several officials said, and Mr. Summers, known for his sometimes scathing assessment of people, takes Mr. Orszag seriously.
But Mr. Orszag seems to chafe a bit at the situation: Mr. Summers holds a job in which Mr. Orszag was initially interested, and as early as the transition period, Mr. Summers tried to control the budget process as well, by seeking to run meetings related to it.
.........
For someone with two BlackBerrys — work and personal — clipped to the small of his back, Mr. Orszag seems governed by little cards: the ones in his breast pocket for notes, another that lists his meetings, a tiny hand-lettered one that materializes to summon him to the Oval Office.
...........
His own health care conversion occurred when a doctor told him several years ago that he was at risk for cardiovascular problems. Mr. Orszag changed his diet. Each day he eats the same egg whites for breakfast and salad topped with chicken for dinner, all from the White House mess.
He also began training for marathons, sometimes startling colleagues by appearing in their offices at day’s end in head-to-toe spandex.
It's easy to be a critic, says Peter Orszag, budget director. He says he's not expecting a budget from Senate republicans and that Representative Paul Ryan crafted an unimpressive budget, complete with tax breaks for the wealthiest and corporations.
Q Thanks, Peter. I was wondering if you could respond to one of the criticisms that some of the Republicans are putting forth -- forward about your budget, which is that -- you know, they're comparing the situation that President Obama sees himself with the situation that Bill Clinton inherited. And they say, well, when Clinton came into office he made a bunch of tough choices, he raised taxes, and he used that to defray the deficit and build confidence in the markets; whereas Obama makes a bunch of tough choices but uses it to expand the role of government in things like energy and health care. Can you talk about that?
DIRECTOR ORSZAG: Sure. Let me first start with I think it's easy to lob criticisms, but part of governing needs -- or part of the policy process needs to involve putting forward alternatives. I haven't seen on the Senate side an alternative budget and my understanding is there won't be one. So it's kind of -- it seems off to be criticizing without putting forward an alternative.
The alternative that has been put forward by Representative Ryan in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago embodies $3 trillion in tax cuts, including for very high-income individuals and for corporations. It involves -- and let's look at this from a fiscal perspective -- it involves setting up privatization under Social Security and having the federal government bear all the downside risk there. So if that system had been in place over the past few years, the federal government would have incurred massive amounts of liabilities to make individual accounts whole for the stock market declines that have occurred. And it involves an approach to health care in which you're given a check for 80 percent of the cost of health care, which then declines over time, and told to go off and just sort of fend for yourself.
So in terms of an alternative vision, I think -- at least it's my impression, that that is the only thing that's been out there. And I think the flaws in it are pretty clear. And with regards directly to your question, I'd also note that, you know, you had said that in 1993 Bill Clinton proposed tax increases. Well, people are saying we're proposing tax increases now.
We are, in terms of health care, approaching this in a somewhat different way than was the case in the early 1990s. But I don't think it's accurate to say, just pursuant to what we were just discussing with regard to the deficit-neutral health reserve fund, it's not accurate to say it's a massive expansion of government. And in fact, as I noted, it -- the health reform effort will be deficit-neutral.
And then the final point I would make is the point that the President made last night and has made on "60 Minutes" and before that, which is if you've asked corporate leaders over the past decade or two what the key to our long-term productivity is, they would -- they have answered consistently: a more efficient health care system; a more efficient energy base and reduced dependence on foreign oil; and improved education, along with a -- you know, raising national savings, which involves reducing the deficit.
So on our four key principles they're very much in line with what even corporate leaders have been saying for a long time is the key to our future prosperity. And I think that's precisely right. I've said this before. But I reject the notion that the key to future prosperity is the top marginal tax rate. See the whole Q&A here.
Either the media is distorting the "budget battle" or things aren't as bad as reported. Peter Orszag, who presents a colorful view of how the budget is shaping up, certainly doesn't seem nervous:
Swamp: "We are very pleased that the House and Senate budget committees are taking up resolutions that are fully in line with the president's key priorities for the budget,'' Peter Orszag, director of the president's Office of Management and Budget, said today.
"They are 98 percent the same as the budget proposal the president sent up in February,'' Orszag said in a conference call with reporters this morning. "The resolutions may not be identical twins to what the president submitted, but they are certainly brothers that look alike.''
Sen. Kent Conrad says Obama's key budget priorities are intact:
Dear Obama Administration, you've been in office for what, 47 days, what's the hold up? Come on pundits, get real. And why does everyone keep saying Obama needs to bow to the stock market. The stock market will come back... in TIME.... when things are square again. And another thing, the leading republicans are beginning to be not just annoying but repulsive.
From budget director Peter Orszag, who posts an occasional "blog" at OMB:
The President is committed to responsibly winding the war. I don’t do foreign policy, but I can tell you this: ending wars saves money – and so the Administration’s budget includes savings from ramping down overseas military operations over time.
Yet critics are claiming that, in calculating the amount saved by ramping down operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Administration is wrong to compare its proposed funding levels to the level in 2008—the last year in which overseas operations were fully funded. Such criticisms are inconsistent not only with common sense but also established practices of budget accounting (and even what the critics themselves have said in the past).
The last time the United States began to ramp down from a prolonged, expensive military engagement, President George H.W. Bush was in office. With the Cold War having just been won, President Bush, for the 1991 budget, proposed a deficit reduction package that included substantial reductions in defense funding. Read more
