President-elect Barack Obama Names Budget Director, Warns of Program Cuts

November 25, 2008 RSS Feed Print
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By Thomas M. DeFrank
Daily News Washington Bureau Chief

CHICAGO—Ratcheting up his campaign to persuade jittery Americans he's on the case and feels their financial pain, President-elect Obama named his budget director today and vowed to overhaul wasteful, business-as-usual spending.

"If we're going to make the investments we need, we must also be willing to shed the spending we don't," Obama said at his second press conference in as many days. "We cannot sustain a system that bleeds billions of taxpayer dollars on programs that have outlived their usefulness, or exist solely because of the power of a politician, lobbyist, or interest group. We simply cannot afford it."

Obama nominated Peter Orszag, director of the Congressional Budget Office, to run the Office of Management and Budget.

He ordered his new chief numbers-cruncher  to scour the federal budget line-by-line for sacred spending cows that should be axed.

"Just because a program, a special interest tax break or corporate subsidy is tucked into this year's budget does not mean it should survive the next," Obama said. "The old ways of Washington simply can't meet the challenges of today and tomorrow."

"This isn't about big government or small government. It's about building a smarter government that focuses on what works," he added.

His 19-minute press conference wasn't intended to generate major news, unlike Monday's announcement of his treasury secretary and chief economic advisers. Instead, Obama  continued an effort launched last week to reassure Americans  he'll be fully engaged in reversing the financial crisis the moment he's sworn in next Jan. 20.

"We don't intend to stumble into the next administration," he pledged. "We are going to hit the ground running."

To keep hammering home that psychological message, Obama will have another press conference tomorrow before winding down for the Thanksgiving holiday.

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I voted for Barack Obama, contributed to and worked on his campaign. I did all this because he appeareed to have a high level of intelligence, was highly motivated to succeed, appeared to have a high level of patriotism and was excellent at political maneuvering. I really doubt that I could have been fooled to this degree. So I find myself asking why with so many good candidates, Senator Obama would appoint Lawrence Summers, a man who appears to have been legacied into a high rank within the economic profession, who in adition to citing women as not being proficient in science and mathematics because of their genetic inheritance and who, along with Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin, his mentor, attacked Brooksley Dorn, then head of the Commodity Futures Exchange Commission in a highly condesceding and demeaning manor when she dared to suggest that greater transparency in derivatives tradung was necessary to protect the economy from potential disaster, disaster which we are experiencing today. As it turned out, Ms. Dorn, who by her record is a highly competent lawyer and civil servant certainly appears to have been correct in her assessment of the consequences of large scale trading in derivatives in the face of total lack of transparency. I find it extremely unsettling to have Dr. Summers selected as President Obama's chief economic advisor and it scares me to death, to have Robert Rubin nearby providing advice to the President elect as well as Mr. Greenspan lurking in the background providing his input is similarly frightening. All three economists, Lawrence Summers, Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan are ideological free marketers. This in exactly the orientation that created the present market fiasco. Why wo9uld the President Elect want to staff his panel of economic advisers with men whose philosophy is similar to that of the economists and bankers who got us into a multi trillion mess with no end in sight and little if any guarantee that we will ever be able to stabilize the economy.

Gerald Chasin, Ph.D

Gerald Chasin of FL 11:20PM November 25, 2008

There is no way Congress will let him cut any program that would have an impact.

Larry of CA 6:55PM November 25, 2008

Welllllllllll .... maybe he is actually channelling me!

RWR2008 of CA 5:52PM November 25, 2008

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