Obama suddenly a fiscal conservative?

[Valmy]

The Pentagon has more contracting agents employed ensuring that money isn't wasted than in the USMC.

[Hansmeister]

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

His point is that the gov't needs to spend more money in order to have better oversight over all the additional money it's spending in order to ensure oversight over the increase in spending ..... 

[DontSayBanana]

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

My point is you shouldn't be bitching about budget bloat until you know how much money is going where. With the amount of money it takes just to keep the government operating, I consider it a small miracle they can come up with any savings at all.

[derspiess]

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.

I think we'd be best served by the current administration wasting as much of its own time as possible 

[Hansmeister]

There is all that oversight in action:

Senator's husband cashes in on crisis
Feinstein sought $25 billion for agency that awarded contract to spouse
By Chuck Neubauer (Contact) | Tuesday, April 21, 2009
On the day the new Congress convened this year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to route $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that had just awarded her husband's real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms.

Mrs. Feinstein's intervention on behalf of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was unusual: the California Democrat isn't a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with jurisdiction over FDIC; and the agency is supposed to operate from money it raises from bank-paid insurance payments - not direct federal dollars.

Documents reviewed by The Washington Times show Mrs. Feinstein first offered Oct. 30 to help the FDIC secure money for its effort to stem the rise of home foreclosures. Her letter was sent just days before the agency determined that CB Richard Ellis Group (CBRE) - the commercial real estate firm that her husband Richard Blum heads as board chairman - had won the competitive bidding for a contract to sell foreclosed properties that FDIC had inherited from failed banks.

About the same time of the contract award, Mr. Blum's private investment firm reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission that it and related affiliates had purchased more than 10 million new shares in CBRE. The shares were purchased for the going price of $3.77; CBRE's stock closed Monday at $5.14.

Spokesmen for the FDIC, Mrs. Feinstein and Mr. Blum's firm told The Times that there was no connection between the legislation and the contract signed Nov. 13, and that the couple didn't even know about CBRE's business with FDIC until after it was awarded.

Senate ethics rules state that members must avoid conflicts of interest as well as "even the appearance of a conflict of interest." Some ethics analysts question whether Mrs. Feinstein ran afoul of the latter provision, creating the appearance that she was rewarding the agency that had just hired her husband's firm.

"This clearly gives the appearance of a conflict of interest," said Kent Cooper, a former federal regulator who specializes in government ethics and disclosures. "To maintain the people's trust in government, it is incumbent on a legislator to take the extra steps necessary to ensure that when she introduces any legislation that it does not cause people to question her motives or the business activities of her spouse."

Mrs. Feinstein and Mr. Blum, a wealthy investment banker, are a power couple in both Washington and California who sat behind President Obama during his inauguration in January. Mrs. Feinstein also is mentioned as a candidate for California governor.

[Valmy]

His point is that the gov't needs to spend more money in order to have better oversight over all the additional money it's spending in order to ensure oversight over the increase in spending ..... 

It sounds sort of like how the Russian Czars were always making agencies to keep agencies from being corrupt...and those agencies were created to keep other agencies from being corrupt...that were created to watch officials who might abuse their power to inform on appointed officials who were supposed to increase efficiency.

[garbon]

My point is you shouldn't be bitching about budget bloat until you know how much money is going where. With the amount of money it takes just to keep the government operating, I consider it a small miracle they can come up with any savings at all.

But they really haven't..not when you say $100 million cut in admin costs, $5 billion added to "foster and fulfill people's desire to make a difference."

[Hansmeister]

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

My point is you shouldn't be bitching about budget bloat until you know how much money is going where. With the amount of money it takes just to keep the government operating, I consider it a small miracle they can come up with any savings at all.

It would help if congress and the President would actually bother reading the bills they approve.  You have to be really ignorant of how gov't spends money not to realize that much of what the gov't spends is utterly wasted due to incompetence, fraud, and abuse.  Just thinking about the way the Army spends its money gives me an headache.

[PDH]

 

It is sad, Hans is trying to fire his boss again.

[DontSayBanana]

Guys, we've trimmed it in recent years. The skyrocketing outlay actually seems to date back to the end of Vietnam.

[Berkut]

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.

We've put up with yours a lot longer than that.

[grumbler]

* DontSayBanana starts getting annoyed

It's incredibly easy to say "he's not saving enough money," but I'm going to clue you fucktards in on something. Running an effective government costs money. You're the same bitches who would whine incessantly about a lame, ineffectual government if we went through and gutted the federal budget the way you guys want. You want accountability for TARP, well Barofsky and his special investigators need food on the table. You want better international relations? Every diplomatic function of the State Department requires money. By the way, that "we'll pay $100M a day" thing is a cop-out, too... as of 2007, there are 138M taxpayers in the US. What's the matter, Hans? So broke from building your dream house that you can't afford less than a dollar a day to avoid an economy tanking?

  The only thing more amusing than an off-topic rant is an off-topic rant that is wrong in almost every peculiar!

DSB, Newsflash:  the economy has tanked even with massive government spending.  That dollar a day Hans spent (and is spending, and will spend for the foreseeable future) was wasted.

[grumbler]

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.

He should have re-watched Dave so he could remember how to do this budget-cutting in a way that helps him, rather than hurts him.  The moral he should keep in mind is "don't copy movie stunts unless you understand how they work."

[DontSayBanana]

* DontSayBanana starts getting annoyed

It's incredibly easy to say "he's not saving enough money," but I'm going to clue you fucktards in on something. Running an effective government costs money. You're the same bitches who would whine incessantly about a lame, ineffectual government if we went through and gutted the federal budget the way you guys want. You want accountability for TARP, well Barofsky and his special investigators need food on the table. You want better international relations? Every diplomatic function of the State Department requires money. By the way, that "we'll pay $100M a day" thing is a cop-out, too... as of 2007, there are 138M taxpayers in the US. What's the matter, Hans? So broke from building your dream house that you can't afford less than a dollar a day to avoid an economy tanking?

  The only thing more amusing than an off-topic rant is an off-topic rant that is wrong in almost every peculiar!

DSB, Newsflash:  the economy has tanked even with massive government spending.  That dollar a day Hans spent (and is spending, and will spend for the foreseeable future) was wasted.

It was not wasted. Right now, you're the one operating under false pretenses; moreover, ones that the federal government tried to quash right at the beginning. There is no magic investment that will set Wall Street rocketing upward, and even if there was, we would suddenly have to worry about hyperinflation; the stimulus was damage control to prevent a collapse, and it has worked in that respect. You're saying it has had no net positive effect, but this is a market-driven economy. 138 million taxpayers means that that stimulus is going to have to work its way through 138 million idiots such as yourself who are whining that it hasn't immediately helped them.

Net results of payments show much slower when you're dealing with accounts as massive and with as much momentum as a national economy. If you give your kid a nickel, he has a nickel. If you account for a nickel in the economy to replace one that was removed, you have to wait for all the actors to review the markets to come to the consensus that yes, there is a nickel there, and then you also have to wait for all of them to review the markets further to see what else is happening in the market because of the nickel's presence and determine that yes, that nickel is going around and generating revenue.

[Kleves]

I find Obama's complete and utter contempt for the average American's intelligence to be one of his most endearing characteristics.