All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., disputed an assessment that the Senate Finance Committee's draft $829 health care bill would cut the federal budget deficit by $81 billion over 10 years.

"The claims that we're saving $81 billion by spending $829 billion, you know, you can say that if you want to go ahead and really rob Peter to pay Paul. And that's exactly what's going on here," Cantor, the House Minority Whip, told "Early Show" co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez Thursday.

On Wednesday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a -preliminary estimate on the cost of the proposal, projecting budget savings of $81 billion over the next decade. It also said "continued reductions in federal budget deficits" were probable in the years beyond. The plan would cover 94 percent of legal, nonelderly Americans within 10 years and would be paid for through a combination of tax increases and spending cuts.

"The way that they are expanding coverage is by taxing employers, is by taxing those of us who have insurance, and, frankly, to the tune of $500 billion," Cantor claimed. "And they're adding on top of that $400 billion worth of cuts to Medicare, which that will mean seniors will have less opportunity, less benefit, less ability to choose the kind of health care that they want."

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The Senate voted this afternoon to boost its own budget, in spite of cries of protest from a couple Republicans on the chamber floor that the budget increase would be irresponsible and inappropriate in the current economy.

By a vote of 62 to 38, the Senate voted to approve a legislative appropriations bill. The House passed the bill last week by a vote of 217 to 190 with only five Republicans supporting it. President Obama is expected to sign it shortly.

A measure included in the bill will increase Congress's annual budget by 5.8 percent to $4.7 billion. The bill also includes, however, a stopgag resolution Congress needed to pass to keep the government funded through October. With the fiscal year ending today, the federal government would have effectively shut down for a month if the resolution had not passed.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) took to the Senate floor to protest the new funding included in the measure, which is detailed in Politico. It includes, among other things, $500,000 for a pilot program for senators to send postcards to inform constituents about their town hall meetings.

"Is there any member of the Senate that needs to send out a postcard to tell our constituents that we're having a town hall meeting? Really?" McCain asked with incredulity.

Additionally, Politico reported, funding for House office buildings would increase under the measure by 128 percent, to $84 million, with some funding for a new roof at the Rayburn House Office Building.

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Not quite "A Day Late and A Dollar Short," the Obama administration released its promised 100 million in budget cuts Monday, a week past its original 90-day deadline.

President Obama asked for the cuts on April 20th, when he challenged his Cabinet to find ways to trim the budget.

While a week behind, the Cabinet did find more money to cut, or save, as it were: $243 million through 2010 and even more in years after that.

Even the president himself acknowledged that $100 million is a drop in the taxpayer bucket. But he said that every cent counts.

"One hundred million here one hundred million there pretty soon even in Washington it adds up to real money," he told reporters at the end of his first Cabinet meeting in April, where he asked each department head to search his or her budget for cuts.

Here are a few examples the White House has cited as success:

The Defense department plans to save $52 million in FY 2010 by replacing the standard jet fuel used by the military with commercial jet fuel plus the military additives.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration plans to digitize its daily news clips - saving $1,000 per year for FY 2009-10.

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Congress is moving forward with plans to fund the construction of additional Lockheed Martin F-22 fighter jets, even though the Obama administration has said the president would veto such a move.

A Senate panel on Thursday approved $1.75 billion to build seven more F-22s and the House of Representatives voted in favor of a Defense Department funding bill that would allocate more funds for the planes, the New York Times reported. Both chambers are also asking for a report from the administration on possibly exporting the planes to Japan and other allies.

On Wednesday, the Obama administration made it clear it opposes the extra funding. The Office of Management and Budget said the funding for more F-22 fighters runs counter to the "collective judgment" of the military's top leaders. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said production of the jets should stop after 187 have been built. Last week, he called the funding boost a "big problem." He said the jet does not fit well into 21st century warfare.

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The latest CBS News/New York Times Poll found that by 52 percent to 41 percent, Americans would prefer the federal government focus on reducing the budget deficit rather than spending to stimulate the economy.

Americans have never liked deficits -- they've been viewed as serious problems, and when the government has run a deficit, polls have often shown that lowering it was a priority.



The government ran budget deficits in the 1980s, during the Reagan Administration, and Americans worried about them then too. In Gallup Polls conducted in the 1980s, just over eight in 10 Americans said the deficit was a serious problem, including about six in 10 who called it very serious.

A few years later, in 1990, a CBS News/New York Times Poll found that 76 percent said the deficit was a serious problem that needed immediate action. Just 16 percent said it was serious but didn't need to be solved immediately, and only three percent rated it not serious.

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Politics Today is CBSNews.com's inside look at the key stories driving the day in Politics, written by CBS News Political Director Steve Chaggaris:

**Deficit spending receives scrutiny...

**Sotomayor confirmation hearings begin July 13; Senate Republicans livid...

**Health care reform begins to take shape on Capitol Hill...

**Who speaks for the GOP?

**Deeds vs. McDonnell for Virginia Governor...

PRESIDENT OBAMA: As Mr. Obama holds a series of closed meetings with advisers, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today (he has no public events on his schedule, as of yet), it's his spending proposals that are garnering scrutiny today.

The New York Times' David Leonhardt reports on today's front page: "There are two basic truths about the enormous deficits that the federal government will run in the coming years. The first is that President Obama's agenda, ambitious as it may be, is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying. The second is that Mr. Obama does not have a realistic plan for eliminating the deficit, despite what his advisers have suggested."

"Mr. Obama's main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Such policies — together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama — account for 20 percent of the swing. About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama's agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas. If the analysis is extended further into the future, well beyond 2012, the Obama agenda accounts for only a slightly higher share of the projected deficits."

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As a budget policy, PAYGO sounds more like a public toilet that requires two quarters to enter.

Actually, it’s short for pay-as-you-go, a policy which, if enacted by Congress as President Obama today implored, would set what he calls a “simple” standard.

“Congress can only spend a dollar if it saves a dollar elsewhere,” he explained.

With his first two federal budgets projecting the largest deficits in U.S. history, each above a trillion dollars, Mr. Obama wants to be seen speaking the gospel of fiscal discipline and distancing himself from the free-spending ways of Congress, of which he was a member for four years.

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The Democrats' comprehensive health care reform bill will prove to be a complex, multi-faceted proposal, but the common theme found in every discussion of the legislation is cost -- how to cover the cost of expanding care, and how to make existing health care practices more cost-efficient.

On Tuesday, two key players from the Senate and the White House said that the health care package that passes in the Senate will have to be budget-nuetral for its first years of implementation, but it must also include long term cost-saving measures like comparative effectiveness research. They made their point the same day President Obama urged Congress to pass "paygo" legislation, which would require any new tax cut or entitlement program to be paid for.

During a forum at the Brookings Institution on Tuesday, White House Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orzag promised the health care reform package the president ultimately signs will be deficit-neutral for five to 10 years under Congressional Budget Office scoring.

"It seems to me implausible a plan that is a big deficit-increaser would pass the Senate," he said.

The bill, he added, will also have to include, "the long term game changers we believe over time will lead to a more efficient health care system. We cannot perpetuate a sitaution where we spend twice as much in some areas versus others and don't seem to get anything from that."

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Even President Obama is taking a hit among the $17 billion in budget cuts he's proposing for the fiscal year that begins October 1st.

He proposes to terminate the program to build a new fleet of helicopters to serve as Marine One.

The White House says the VH-71 program is six years behind schedule and is plagued by cost overruns with more projected on the horizon.

Mr. Obama will make due with the helicopters now in service, even though many of them are decades old. Cost savings: $750 million.

The choppers are one of 121 programs the president is targeting for budget reductions or eliminations.

"We have to admit that there is a lot of money that's being spent inefficiently, ineffectively, and, in some cases, in ways that are actually pretty stunning," said the president in announcing the cutbacks.

There are reductions or terminations in programs for agriculture, education, missile defense, energy and transportation.

But Mr. Obama tried to pre-empt suggestions that his proposed budget savings are little more than a drop in the bucket. They amount to less than one half of one percent of his $3.5-trillion dollars in spending next year.

"Even by Washington standards," he said, "that should be considered real money."

"To put this in perspective, the $17 billion is more than enough savings to pay for a $2,500 tuition tax credit for millions of students, as well as a larger Pell grant, with enough money left over to pay for everything we do to pay for -- to protect the national parks. And this is just one aspect of the budget reforms and savings we're seeking."

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In remarks on his administration's proposed $17 billion in cuts from the 2010 budget this morning, President Obama was somewhat on the defensive against charges that his cuts don't amount to much considering that next year's total budget amounts to $3.4 trillion.

As Steve Chaggaris noted in Hotsheet's morning bulletin today, the news that the cuts totaled $17 billion "landed with a bit of a thud" in the media. Reporters stressed that the cuts made up "a tiny fraction" of the total budget and that they would be hard to push through; USA Today noted that the "proposed cuts are about one-fiftieth the size of this year's $787 billion economic stimulus package — all of which was added to the deficit."

In his remarks today, the president sought to change that tenor of that coverage. He mocked the notion that smaller savings are considered "trivial" in Washington and stressed that "these savings, large and small, add up."

And he told journalists directly that they should stress the fact that the cuts are "significant" – a surprisingly direct appeal to reporters concerning which angle they should take in their coverage.

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