Where to cut the spending? Obama has told us we have to make some tough choices. Yup, it wasn’t easy, but they decided to keep in the $2.5 million for a Census ad during the Super Bowl. That’s just a part of the $132 million we will spend to tell people to fill out and mail in their census forms.

We’d get a better bang for our buck by gambling it in Vegas. No matter what Obama says about the town, at least there we would have a chance to win big.

I understand that our constitution requires a census every ten years, but it does not require we waste our money advertising for it. You don’t turn it in – you’re not counted. Next!

Here are some of the proposed cuts listed on the White House blog as “tough choices” for 2011:


  • Cutting Save America’s Treasures and Preserve America grant programs at the National Park Service. Save America’s Treasures program was started to mark the millennium and was supposed to last for two years. Both programs lack rigorous performance metrics and evaluation efforts so the benefits are unclear.

  • Eliminate the Advanced Earned Income Tax Credit (AEITC). EITC eligible taxpayers with children may file a form with their employers and receive a portion of their EITC throughout the year in their paychecks. Only a tiny number of EITC eligible taxpayers claim the AEITC; 3 percent, or 514,000 taxpayers according to the Government Accountability Office. And the error rate for the program is high: 80 percent of recipients did not comply with at least one program requirement. This ineffective and prone-to-error program should be eliminated.

  • Terminate the Brownfields Economic Development Initiative.While a consistent supporter of the brownfield clean-up on the campaign trail and a strong advocate for expanding economic opportunity in urban areas, the President proposes to eliminate BEDI, a small program duplicative of larger programs. Instead, the Administration consolidates its support for the brownfield clean-up – funding larger programs and thereby reducing overhead costs.

  • End Abandoned Mine Lands Payments to Certified States. The Abandoned Mine Land program was established to restore abandoned coal mine lands. Changes to this program allowed these funds to go to states and tribes who already have cleaned up these mine. Paying states and tribes to clean up mines that are already cleaned up was not the intention of this program, and is why it is being terminated

    • If those are tough choices we are in serious trouble.

    As a side note did you see where the money for the tax credits Obama is touting to create jobs are being paid for by the TARP funds? It was bad enough when the money was going to the banks and was earmarked to come back to us when they paid it back. It got worse when they started giving it to car and insurance companies. Now we’ve totally turned it into a slush fund. Kiss it all good bye.

    Obama and the Democrats think they can control the economy and spend our way out of our problems. They think it’s all their money to be doled out. They target tax cuts for limited times in ways they think will control our behavior instead of just cutting taxes for all – individuals, businesses, investors, etc. They don’t understand the unintended consequences of their actions and have no clue how businesses and people plan for the long term. The result will be a slow, weak recovery.

    Hey, Big Government – quit stealing, borrowing and spending our money and get out of the way!