President Obama Follows President Dave
Watching President Obama's comments formally announcing his intention to halve the federal budget deficit by the end of his first term, Hotsheet was reminded of a prior, albeit fictional, effort to shave the fat from the budget.
"We're going to really have to start making some tough choices," Kevin Kline (at left) says in the scene. He then turns to one of his Cabinet members. "The Commerce Department. You're spending $47 million on an ad campaign to boost consumer confidence in the American auto industry."
After the Commerce Secretary defends the program, Kline says, "I'm sure that's important, but I don't want to tell some 8-year-old kid that he has to sleep in the street because we want people to feel better about their car."
The scene, of course, represents a particularly Hollywood version of the path to fiscal discipline. But Kline's words are not all that different from the rhetoric offered by the president today. Consider this part of Mr. Obama's remarks:
To start reducing these deficits, I've committed to going through our budget line by line to root out waste and inefficiency -- a process that Peter and our administration, our team, has already begun. And I'll soon be instructing each member of my Cabinet to go through every item in their budgets, as well. And already we've seen how much money we can save, just in the last 30 days.It seems unlikely that Mr. Obama will be able to shave the fat with the same ease as Mr. Kline, whose meeting ended in rapturous applause from his Cabinet members. But it's hard to deny that his rhetoric is not unlike that of the fictional non-president in a 16-year-old political drama.Take one example -- the Department of Agriculture has moved some of its training programs online, saving an estimated $1.3 million a year.
Of course, there is one clear difference between the two: Mr. Obama, unlike his fictional predecessor, can't ask his Commerce Secretary to cut the fat – that particular Cabinet chair, to the administration's continuing frustration, remains empty.