WOW! Rob Portman plans to cut the "groaning US budget deficit" in HALF!

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

President George W. Bush has nominated Trade Representative Rob Portman, seen here on April 12, as his new budget chief, handing the popular former congressman the job of halving the groaning US budget deficit.(AFP/File/Karen Bleier)



U.S. President George W. Bush walks down the White House colonnade to the Rose Garden with new administration nominees Susan Schwab (L) and Rob Portman (R) in Washington April 18, 2006. Bush nominated Portman as his new Director of the Office of Management and Budget and Schwab to replace Portman as the new United States Trade Representative. REUTERS/Jason Reed

[leftchick]

1. and I bet I know how he is going to do it!

By making the tax cuts PERMANENT!!!!!!

[meegbear]

2. WhooHoo! More tax cuts for the wealthy and cutting socail services ...

Fiscal responsibility at last!

[sui generis]

3. meanwhile, back in the real world

in business we throw those kinds of people out of the first interview. I wonder who he had to blow to get that job.

[saltpoint]

4. Politically, it's a good call by Bolten, or Bush, or Rove, or whoever's

in charge there these days.

Portman is a fast-rising star.

I'm kind concerned that he will be the VP nominee on the GOP ticket in 08. They want to keep Ohio in their column. Portman would help in that goal.

[Lerkfish]

5. c'mon its easy! right now the budget roughly breaks down to:

Department of Health and Human Services (includes Medicaid and Medicare)
23.68%
Social Security Administration
21.87%
Department of Defense
18.91%
Interest on the Debt
14.72%

(these are the four largest items in the budget)

If you eliminate the first two, there's 45% right there!

:puke:

[realFedUp]

6. In Bushspeak or real facts?

could reporters asterisk the Bushspeak please.

[Inland]

7. half of what? Last years deficit, this year's, next years? By when?

These guys imitate what Bush Sr did. Every year his OMB would put out a deficit projection looking like a J-curve. Each sucessive year the uptick was just as far in the future. Then Bush sr left office, still on teh downward slop of the J.

[lumberjack_jeff]

10. Good point

It's the perfect opportunity to revise their deficit projections to be realistic. Since the actual deficit will be twice what they project, they'll acknowledge that reality and vow to cut it in half - back to point A.

Point A is still $400 billion too high - it should be balanced.

[lumberjack_jeff]

8. Sure. The Blue United states of America gets half. Jesusland, the rest.

[LetsGoMurphys]

14. the anti federal govt red states take the most as it is

By Steven Pearlstein
Wednesday, January 19, 2005; Page E01

"Among the biggest winners in 2003, for example, were New Mexico, at $1.99 for every tax dollar paid, followed closely by Alaska, Mississippi, North and South Dakota, Alabama and Montana -- the "red-ink states," as Ken Cook of the Environmental Working Group calls them. The biggest loser was New Jersey, at 57 cents per dollar paid, followed by blue states Connecticut, New York, California, Massachusetts and Illinois."

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19566-2005Jan18.html>

[dolstein]

9. Grossly overweight man promises to cut rate of weight gain in half

Seriously, if someone walked into a doctor's office weighing, say, 400 lbs, would a doctor prescribe a weight loss regimen that merely reduced the amount of weight the patient was gaining each year from 100 lbs to 50 lbs? I think not.

Cutting the size of the annual deficit doesn't do a damn thing to cut the size of the national debt. We have to eliminate the deficit, produce a surplus, and pay down the national debt. And the Republicans don't have a clue as to how to do that, because they refuse to consider increasing taxes (even though income tax revenue as a share of GDP is at its lowest point in nearly 50 years).

[Divernan]

11. From now to 11/06: "We are makin robust progress on 1/2ing the deficit!

When they aren't doing squat, or the situation is actually worsening,and they don't want to release the numbers, the Bush admin. constantly talks the talk. The more "robust" they claim progress is, the worse things are getting.

[Inland]

12. We must immediately begin to do something sometime in the future.

It's not a plan for tomorrow, it's the announcement that we aren't going to see any important today.

[Divernan]

16. Like the WH task force on handling IEDs in the US

Although many experts are concerned that the increasing sophistication of terrorists in building bigger and deadlier IEDs will lead to the use of them in the US, and the WH had ONE meeting on this about a year ago, no further meetings have even been scheduled. The original meeting included no representatives from state or local agencies, although they will be the first responders to such attacks, and the original meeting bogged down in turf battles between DHS, FBI etc., as to which agency could be in charge. The standard political response to difficult issues: Name a task force and forget it.

[Norquist Nemesis]

13. He's sure done a bang up job as Trade Rep, hasn't he!

:sarcasm:

[spindrifter]

15. I think I have found someone who

is worse at math than I.