Smoke And Mirrors: Forget $38B: Budget only cuts $352 million this year

I know that the GOP has a majority in only the House and it is an uphill battle to get anything through the Democrat Senate and the Democrat President, but to come out saying they were victorious after agreeing to this "smoke and mirrors" "hard fought" agreement is a scandal.

It is obvious from Obama's recent budget speech that he is only serious about demonizing the Republicans and the Tea Party movement and getting re-elected in 2012. He is also not going to give in on his far left "accomplishments" which are a prelude to his "new world order" agenda.

The only sure way of stopping this headlong dive into the financial abyss, is to rid our government of the liberal mindset and elect fiscal conservatives into office in 2012. If Obama is re-elected without an offsetting super majority in Congress, economic stagnation, energy malaise, and Obamacare, without judicial action, will be a done deal and our free country as we know it will be well on the way of the dodo bird.

Excerpt: When President Obama and congressional leaders brokered a deal last week to keep the government funded for another six months, they hailed the "historic" spending cuts the deal included -- $38.5 billion in cuts from this year's budget alone.

A study from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office confirms that the legislation does indeed cut that much from what federal agencies are authorized to spend this year -- but the study reveals that it will only amount to a reduction of $352 million in non-war government spending for the rest of this fiscal year. That's in part because a significant portion of the cuts come from authorized funds that won't be spent immediately, such as water-and-sewer grants.

The budget makes about $8 billion in immediate cuts to domestic programs and foreign aid, but those are offset by defense spending increases. On top of that, when war funding is considered, federal spending will actually increase by $3.3 billion compared with current levels.

Additionally, as the Washington Post reports today, about $8.6 billion in the budgetary reductions come from "cutting" funds that might never have been spent in the first place. Those funds, accounting over 20 percent of the "cuts," only existed as IOUs to agencies that may or may not have been cashed in.

For instance, Congress allotted more than $20 million necessary to build the Capitol Visitor Center at the U.S. Capitol building. The visitor center is now completed, but the U.S. Capitol still is technically owed the rest of its budget for that project. The budget deal the House votes on today takes back $15 million from that project.

Read full CBS News article here.