President-elect Obama’s promises to create budgetary savings by eliminating waste.  Let me start out by saying this goal conflicts with the earlier hints coming from his team that we need a huge FDR style budget busting stimulus.  Additionally, it looks a lot like Deval Patrick’s promises when he became governor, and like his friend Governor Patrick, it’ll go nowhere when the rubber meets the legislature.  The Pelosi/Reid Congress couldn’t even get the origional TARP done without a hefty load of earmarks and that bill was supposedly needed to avoid a financial Pearl Harbor.

I’ll remind the president-elect, as John McCain should have during the debates, that he doesn’t have a line item veto.  Therefore, I wish him loads of luck in finding the wasted billions, but it won’t do him much good since Congress controls the purse strings.  There’s not a snowballs chance in hell that he gets his party to comply with its 2006 promise to cut earmarks and pork.

Archived in: budget, Democrats, Economics, pork barrel spending, President-elect Barack Obama