Obama Vows to Cut Budget Waste

President-elect Barack Obama vowed on Tuesday to cut waste in a federal budget that “bleeds billions,” to help offset the costs of the huge stimulus package his team is planning.
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Obama Vows Budget Cuts
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"If we are going to make the investments we need, we also have to be willing to shed the spending that we don’t need," he said.

The president-elect, speaking to reporters in Chicago to introduce another key member of his economic team, also offered insight into the way he interpreted the election results that carried him to power. He said his victory was “decisive,” but brought with it a sense of humility that underscored the need for bipartisanship.

As expected, Mr. Obama said that he would nominate Peter R. Orszag to be director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Orszag has been director of the Congressional Budget Office for nearly two years; he has worked in both the Bush and Clinton administrations.
Mr. Obama said he would nominated Rob Nabors, staff director of the House Appropriations Committee, to be Mr. Orszag’s deputy.

“Budget reform is not an option, it’s a necessity,” Mr. Obama said. After focusing Monday on financial rescue efforts and the rough outlines of his planned stimulus package, he concentrated Tuesday on budget issues.

Mr. Obama cited, as an example of the sort of cuts he expects Mr. Orszag and Mr. Nabors to find, a recent government report showing that farmers whose incomes exceeded $2.5 million had probably wrongly been paid some $49 million in government subsidies over a three-year period.
But he did not offer any other specific targets, and by itself, correcting the problem with the farm program would make only a trivially small dent in the budget deficits the federal government will face for years.

The president-elect, who until this week had been keeping a low profile in Chicago while constructing his administration, was speaking in his second economy-related news conference in two days, with a third set for Wednesday. He was asked about the much higher profile he had suddenly adopted, and whether he had changed his mind about there being “only one president at a time.”

“It’s important, given the uncertainty in the markets and given the very legitimate anxiety that the American people are feeling that they know their new president has a plan and is going to act swiftly and boldly,” Mr. Obama said.

The people needed to know, he said, “that we don’t intend to stumble into the next administration, we are going to hit the ground running.”

But was there a danger, he was asked, that he might be reading to much into the 8-million-vote margin by which he defeated Senator John McCain, his Republican rival?

“We had, I think, a decisive win,” Mr. Obama said. “I don’t think that there’s any question that we have a mandate to move the country in a new direction, and not continue the same old practices that have gotten us into the fix that we’re in.”

But he quickly noted that Mr. McCain, too, had won millions of votes, and he said it was important to maintain “a sense of humility and a recognition that wisdom is not the monopoly of any one party.”

“I think what the American people want more than anything is just common-sense smart government,” Mr. Obama said. “They don’t want ideology. They don’t want bickering. They don’t want sniping. They want action, and they want effectiveness.”

He said he was encouraged that word of his earlier economic nominees, including Timothy F. Geithner to head the Treasury department and Lawrence Summers as senior White House economic adviser, had received praise from members of both parties.

Several cabinet posts with important economic influence have still to be filled, and Mr. Obama may announce shome names on Wednesday. The pending posts include the secretaries of commerce, labor, energy and health and human services.

Mr. Obama said that as he looks for ways to stimulate the economy in the short term, he will concentrate on measures that can also have beneficial longer-term effects.

“My first priority and my first job is to get us on the path of economic recovery, to create 2.5 million jobs, to provide relief to middle-class families,” he said. But he also wanted to set up a long-term plan to reduce deficits “and make sure we’re not leaving a mountain of debt for the next generation.”
by- BRIAN KNOWLTON