Obama: Cut 121 programs

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama asked Congress on Thursday to eliminate or trim 121 federal programs for a savings of $17 billion in the coming budget year. Many of the proposed cuts have already been rejected by Obama’s allies in Congress, including some programs that his predecessor, President George W. Bush, repeatedly sought to end.

Despite the relatively modest nature of the cuts, “none of this will be easy” amid the continuing deep economic slump, Obama said.

The proposed cuts amount to less than one-half of 1 percent of his $3.6 trillion federal budget outline.

Republicans immediately denounced his proposed reductions as too small. “The resulting savings are relatively minor compared with the government’s fiscal woes,” said House Republican Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Answering criticism that his cuts were but a drop in a multitrillion-dollar spending bucket, Obama said: “Some of the cuts we’re putting forward today are more painful than others. Some are larger than others. In fact, a few of the programs we eliminate will produce less than a million dollars in savings. Outside of Washington, that’s still a lot of money.”

Obama said that Americans are tightening their belts in these difficult times and want to know if Washington “is prepared to act with the same sense of responsibility.”

“I believe we can and must do exactly that,” Obama said in a statement he delivered before cameras at the White House.

The spending cuts for the budget year that begins Oct. 1 were detailed in a supplement to the broader 2010 budget outline that the president proposed in February and which Congress has already acted on.

White House budget director Peter Orszag said the president’s plan for program cuts is just a start and that a lot more needs to be done to dig the government out of its fiscal hole, especially curbing the growth of the Medicare and Medicaid health-care programs for the elderly and the poor.

“But $17 billion a year is not chump change by anyone’s accounting,” he said.

Those savings are far exceeded by a 21‚Ñ2-inch-thick volume detailing Obama’s generous increases for domestic programs. And instead of devoting the savings to defray record deficits, the White House is funneling them back into other programs.

Despite redoubling its efforts to portray itself as tough on waste and spending, it’s undeniable that the administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress has taken the nation on a steady course of higher budgets in appropriated accounts. In rapid succession has come passage of a $787 billion economic recovery bill, a $410 billion omnibus appropriations bill and Congress’ $3.4 trillion budget, which calls for increases of almost 10 percent over current funding for nondefense agency budgets.