Making Tough Choices

The White House's latest claim is now that they have recently made some "touch choices" in cutting the budget.

So how hard were these choices? Some of the largest cuts were:

1. Completing the nationalization of the student loan program. Ed has already written on this one. It removes $8 billion in subsidies to banks for making student loans, using the Federal government’s ability to borrow money instead of the banks using theirs. They’ll argue it saves money. But it greatly expands the Federal control of education, permits the handing out of favors to students who become public sector employees, and subjects students to Congressional whim instead of financial market uncertainty. I’m not sure students will like that trade-off. The administration is calling a takeover of the student loan market 40% of its “budget cutting exercise”.
2. End the NASA Constellation program that sends astronauts back to the moon by 2020. $3.466 billion is to be saved by this. I’m usually inclined to like these privatizations, which is why I suspect it won’t survive. There are states in the South that are already beneficiaries of this spending, and some people can’t stand that other people are making money on space exploration. Most voters like space exploration (example) and it’s just not something people will look at and want to kill.
3. Kill the C-17 program. It’s baaaack, after being rejected by the Senate last October. You want to really believe they’ll change their minds this time? Fuhgeddaboudit. That’s $2.5 billion of the $20 b.

Thank you to Hot Air for providing those cuts.

Now weren't those "tough choices"?

The whole cuts add up to 20 billion. YAY!!! Great News!1 Oh, except that is out of a 3.8 trillion dollar budget. So in reality, while 20 billion may seem like a lot, that is about half of a percent of the total budget.