Real Money?

I guess it's relative. Sure, $17 billion seems like a lot of money, even by Washington standards. As the congressman (not sure which one) once said, "a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money." The President has dramatically announced $17 billion in spending cuts for next year's budget. This, from a projected budget of over $3.4 trillion. As Fox News noted these cuts would be roughly one half of one percent of the total budget. And of course this is from a budget that was dramatically increased in the past year, and a budget that may still be over a trillion dollars in the red. Consider a household with a total budget of $50,000. An equivalent cut would be $250. That ain't much. While the President's budget director Peter Orszag says this is not "chump change," it sure seems like it.