Obama has cut the amount of assistance for heat for the poor by 60% at a time when so many are unemployed. I think it’s time to reorder priorities. The people who live in a country should be the number one concern. Cuts should be made to govt. grants to study the tse tse fly, etc. rather than let the poor elderly, disabled and families go cold and hungry.
If the White House had to be cold in proportion to how the poor live, I think govt. people would naturally change things around. Let the Congress and the President’s food, heat and medical care be cut like the poor and show them exactly how it feels to the poor.
I’m not sure its really worth it to get worked up about the Presidents budget proposal one way or the other, since Congress just ignores them anyways, even when the Presidents party controls the House. I’m don’t know why various White Houses bother.
But in anycase, last years LIHEAP funding apparently included money allocated as part of the Stimulus for weatherization, and a bump that was approved to help poor families cope with the weird spike in oil prices at the beginning of the Great Recession. The current proposal is to return it to where it was in 2007.
Which isn’t to say I wouldn’t like to see the funding remain high, as I think its a good program, and because I don’t think the gov’t should cut programs helping the poor while unemployment remains high and wages depressed. But the rational behind lowering it is pretty straight forward.
Pretty much all foreign aid serves US interests- either through improving US security or creating market conditions and trade agreements that are favorable to us.
What do you think Congress/the President’s number one concern is? US domestic spending is measured in the trillions. Foreign aid is a relative drop in the bucket at ~$300 billion.
Closer to 50 billion And a lot of that goes to places like Iraq and Afghanistan that were recently occupied by the US. And as even sven notes, a lot of it is also just a convoluted method of subsidizing domestic US industries.
Actually, forget the small fry stuff: the HHS IG says that there’s about $60 billion in Medicare fraud. Maybe we could step up fraud enforcement efforts and save 5% of that?
Now that’s a good one, although that is an increase in spending initially, rather than an actual cut. Is there a reliable estimate as to what it would cost to step up those efforts to the point where that $3 billion can be saved?
The Republicans are the ones who are so resistant to increasing revenue. Cutting taxes is good. Giving money to millionaires and billionaire corporations is a good thing. But gods forbid any money be spent helping citizens.