Obama suddenly a fiscal conservative?

[Faeelin]

Ya know Hans, I don't understand. You criticize him when he spends money to combat a recession through a combination of tax cuts and government spending, you criticize him for cutting spending....

[garbon]

you criticize him for cutting spending....

[garbon]

More spending cu...oh

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090421/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_national_service

National service bill to get Obama's signature

The AmeriCorps program started by President Bill Clinton will triple in size over the next eight years, and tens of thousands of other Americans will soon see new opportunities to give back to their communities.

It's all part of a $5.7 billion national service bill President Barack Obama is scheduled to sign Tuesday to foster and fulfill people's desire to make a difference, such as by mentoring children, cleaning up parks or building and weatherizing homes for the poor.

[Eddie Teach]

*shrug*

Better than spending an extra 100 million.

Not if the political capital gained from the gesture allows spending extra billions elsewhere.

[Grey Fox]

you criticize him for cutting spending....

Would you have prefered your Clinton girl did the cut?

[The Minsky Moment]

Why did it take 100 days for Obama to have his first cabinet meeting?

As usual Hans misses the real point.

Full cabinet meetings are a waste of time.  Crammming 16 people into a meeting where most of them are doing completely different things serves no substantive purpose.  Obama at least got $100 million out of it by doing the only sensible thing in such a setting - giving them a little homework assignment to do.

[garbon]

Would you have prefered your Clinton girl did the cut?

She can't disappoint me as president as she doesn't wear the crown.

[Grey Fox]

Would you have prefered your Clinton girl did the cut?

She can't disappoint me as president as she doesn't wear the crown.

No one can please King Garbon, anyway.

[garbon]

No one can please King Garbon, anyway.

I find many people pleasing.

[dps]

Running an effective government costs money.

So does running an ineffective government.

[Valmy]

Not if the political capital gained from the gesture allows spending extra billions elsewhere.

Well he gains little political capital from me either way.  After a couple years the results will speak for themselves.

[Grallon]

I thought I'd enjoy Hansmeister having hissy fits under Obama but really, the thought of four years of his intellectual bad faith and idelogical zealotry is beyond tedious.



G.

[DontSayBanana]

I saw the point, but he was talking specifically about administrative costs. OMB recognizes 28 branches of the federal government, each with their own spending. Most things that people take for granted, IT for example, are not centralized, so essentially each branch needs to be run as a distinct agency entity.

Garbon, my point is that you and Hans like to cry "spending" at everything without acknowledging the sheer scale of operations that are being affected. We're talking about.

With more than 1.8 million civilian employees, the Federal Government, excluding the Postal Service is the Nation's largest employer.

That's excluding the postal service. Including the post office, you're up to about 2.4 million employees. If every single non-postal federal employee was at GS1, the budget for their payroll alone would be $29.9 billion.

[garbon]

Do you have a point? We already know that $100 million cut is chump change.

[Hansmeister]

I saw the point, but he was talking specifically about administrative costs. OMB recognizes 28 branches of the federal government, each with their own spending. Most things that people take for granted, IT for example, are not centralized, so essentially each branch needs to be run as a distinct agency entity.

Garbon, my point is that you and Hans like to cry "spending" at everything without acknowledging the sheer scale of operations that are being affected. We're talking about.

With more than 1.8 million civilian employees, the Federal Government, excluding the Postal Service is the Nation's largest employer.

That's excluding the postal service. Including the post office, you're up to about 2.4 million employees. If every single non-postal federal employee was at GS1, the budget for their payroll alone would be $29.9 billion.

You know, giving a notoriously incompetent and inefficient garguantian government bureaucracy hundreds of billions of dollars of additional spending isn't going to result is magically appearing greater "oversight", only in more massive wasteful spending.

The Pentagon has more contracting agents employed ensuring that money isn't wasted than in the USMC.  How is that working out for spending oversight?   

Man, that's about the most retarded argument I've heard on languish in a long time.