President Obama yesterday told his Cabinet secretaries to trim their spending by $100 million — the equivalent of a family earning $50,000 a year slashing costs by all of $1.35.
Speaking at his first full Cabinet meeting, Obama — whose drop-in-the-bucket savings goal represents 0.0027 percent of his budget — said he wants his administration “to make sure that this government is as efficient as possible and that every taxpayer dollar that is spent is being spent wisely.”
Republicans on Capitol Hill mercilessly ridiculed the paltry goals — given the government’s monstrous spending and exploding debt.
With a current burn rate of about $7.6 million per minute, Republicans noted, “It will take about 13 minutes for the federal government to spend $100 million.”
And they pointed out they saved taxpayers twice that amount when they stripped from Obama’s stimulus package the $200 million that had been included for spiffing up the National Mall.
“Saving is always a laudable goal, but this meager proposal is an insult to taxpayers, considering the billions of dollars wasted in the Democrats’ budget,” said House Republican aide Brad Dayspring.
Obama’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2010, which begins this October, is $3.6 trillion. And he acknowledged that his little savings kick was basically symbolic, saying:
“None of these savings by themselves are going to solve our long-term fiscal problems, but taken together, they can make a difference, and they send a signal that we are serious about changing how government operates.”
About the paltry cuts, Obama insisted, “Cumulatively, they make an extraordinary difference because they start setting a tone.
“And so what we’re going to do is, line by line, page by page, $100 million there, $100 million here, pretty soon. even in Washington, it adds up to real money,” he joked.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs found himself having to backtrack.
He spent much of his early briefings dismissing questions about the cost of projects included in the stimulus package, because the amounts — often in the hundreds of millions — were such a small portion of the overall plan.
But yesterday, he went to great pains to talk about what a huge amount of money $100 million suddenly is.
“Only in Washington, DC, is $100 million not a lot of money,” he said.
churt@nypost.com