When is $100 million small change?
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When you are President Obama and you propose trimming that amount from your $3.6 trillion federal budget.
On the theory that every little bit helps, Mr. Obama convened the first cabinet meeting of his presidency on Monday and said that in an effort to make the government “as efficient as possible” and to ensure that “every taxpayer dollar is being spent wisely,” he was challenging department heads and agency chiefs to come up with ways to save $100 million over the next 90 days.
Budget analysts promptly burst out laughing. A reporter declared at the White House briefing that the initiative would become fodder for late-night talk show hosts. The Republican Study Committee, a group of fiscal conservatives, put out a news release with the headline “Obama’s 0.0025% spending cut.”
The White House was quickly thrust into explaining mode. “This is a symbol of a new attitude and a new perspective,” Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said in an interview, insisting that Americans would appreciate the effort.
Mr. Emanuel pointed out that the president’s budget proposes to cut $2 trillion over 10 years, and that Mr. Obama was proposing to save as much as $50 billion through more efficient military procurement.
Of the $100 million, he said, “If that’s all I did — legitimate criticism. But it’s part of an entire process of going through the budget line by line.”
Yet in the city where former Senator Everett M. Dirksen is supposed to have said, “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money,” $100 million does not seem like very much these days. After all, Mr. Obama has just signed a $787 billion economic stimulus bill into law. The federal deficit is projected to hit $1.8 trillion this year.
“He enacts a $1 trillion stimulus and then calls for $100 million in cuts?” said Brian Riedl, a budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy organization. Mr. Obama’s proposal, Mr. Riedl said, was tantamount to asking a family that spends $40,000 a year to cut $1 out of its budget.
The White House put out a list of money-saving areas it has already identified. The Agriculture Department is proposing to save $16 million a year by working with the Treasury Department to root out fraud in the farm subsidy program. The Education Department is increasing the ratio of employees to computer printers and plans to save $2 million by eliminating desktop computers for employees who have laptops.
The Department of Homeland Security estimates that it can save up to $52 million over five years by buying office supplies in bulk. The Justice Department believes it can save $6.7 million by publishing judicial forfeiture notices on the Internet, as opposed to in newspapers.
Mr. Obama said he recognized that “none of these things alone are going to make a difference.” But, he insisted, they would add up.
“$100 million there, $100 million here,” Mr. Obama said. “Pretty soon, even in Washington, it adds up to real money.”