OBAMA'S FIRST BUDGET SEEKS TO TRIM DEFICIT: President Obama is putting the finishing touches on an ambitious first budget that seeks to cut the federal deficit in half over the next four years, primarily by raising taxes on businesses and the wealthy and by slashing spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, administration officials said. In addition to tackling a deficit swollen by the $787 billion stimulus package and other efforts to ease the nation's economic crisis, the budget blueprint will press aggressively for progress on the domestic agenda Obama outlined during the presidential campaign. This would include key changes to environmental policies and a major expansion of health coverage that he hopes to enact later this year.
COMMENTARY By FAREED ZAKARIA (A FOREIGN AFFAIRS ANALYST FOR CNN): Here's the basic problem we face: the American consumer is deep in debt and he is not going to spend. That's 70 percent of the economy that is gone. Then there are the businessmen -- they are being very cautious in the face of a worldwide recession. The only entity that can spend is the government. Is it a perfect stimulus? No, but it's a lot better than nothing. Jerry Lewis, who will finally receive his Oscar laurel on Sunday, embodies a certain kind of American exuberance bordering on the grotesque. COMMENTARY By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN: Reading the news that General Motors and Chrysler are now lining up for another $20 billion or so in government aid on top of the billions theyve already received or requested leaves me with the sick feeling that we are subsidizing the losers and for only one reason: because they claim that their funerals would cost more than keeping them on life support. Sorry, friends, but this is not the American way. Bailing out the losers is not how we got rich as a country, and it is not how well get out of this crisis. G.M. has become a giant wealth- destruction machine possibly the biggest in history and it is time that it and Chrysler were put into bankruptcy so they can truly start over under new management with new labor agreements and new visions. When it comes to helping companies, precious public money should focus on start-ups, not bailouts. You want to spend $20 billion of taxpayer money creating jobs? Fine. Call up the top 20 venture capital firms in America, which are short of cash today because their partner's university endowments and pension funds are tapped out, and make them this offer: The U.S. Treasury will give you each up to $1 billion to fund the best venture capital ideas that have come your way. If they go bust, we all lose. If any of them turns out to be the next Microsoft or Intel, taxpayers will give you 20 percent of the investors upside and keep 80 percent for themselves. If we are going to be spending billions of taxpayer dollars, it can't only be on office-decorating bankers, over-leveraged home speculators and auto executives who year after year spent more energy resisting changes and lobbying Washington than leading change and beating Toyota. COMMENTARY By MAUREEN DOWD: Barack Obama's grandmother told him to smile more. Bill Clinton tells the new president to strut more. As the country takes a bullet train to bankruptcy, the last Democratic president urged the current one to embody that old American spunk. That spirit of as they sing in Oklahoma We know we belong to the land and the land we belong to is grand! A-YIP-I-O-EE-AY! It's worth reminding the American people that for more than 230 years everyone who bet against America lost money, Clinton told Chris Cuomo on Good Morning America. I just want him to embody that and to share that. It's rich. The Man from Hope whose Missus castigated Candidate Obama for raising false hopes is now criticizing President Obama for not peddling more gauzy hope. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WebTV Dawgs/Dittos" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/WebTV-Pals -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
