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Official: Obama wants agency spending cut by $100m

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-04-20 22:55

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama convenes his first formal Cabinet meeting Monday and will ask department and agency chiefs to look for ways over the next 90 days to cut US$100 million out of the federal budget, a senior administration official said.

Back from his fence-mending trip to Latin America and the Caribbean, Obama will be reminding the panel that American families are having to make tough financial decisions and need to know the government is spending their money wisely, too. The official discussed Topic A for the session on grounds of anonymity because it will be behind closed doors.

Related readings:  Obama orders US government budget cuts

A second senior official, also speaking anonymously, said Obama will point to cuts already being proposed.

The Veterans Affairs Department has canceled or delayed 26 conferences, saving nearly US$17.8 million, he noted, and will be using less expensive alternatives, like video conferencing. The Agriculture Department is working to combine 1,500 employees from seven office locations into a single facility in 2011 - saving US$62 million over a 15-year lease term. And the Homeland Security Department has estimated it can save up to US$52 million over five years by purchasing office supplies in bulk.

President Barack Obama arrives by Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House, after returning from the Fifth Summit of the Americas held in Trinidad and Tobago, Washington, DC, April 19, 2009.  [Agencies]

The federal deficit for March alone was US$192.3 billion, and US$100 million would represent about one-twentieth of 1 percent of that. Obama has brought forward a US$3.6 trillion budget for the 2010 fiscal year, beginning Oct. 1, a proposal that would produce US$9.3 trillion in deficits over the next decade.

Earlier this month, both the House and Senate passed companion budget plans giving Obama and his Capitol Hill allies a key victory, but 20 House Democrats from GOP-leaning areas abandoned him on the final vote because of unhappiness over deficits.

The Cabinet meeting is being held just days after a series of "Tea Party" demonstrations across the country in which protesters challenged the administration over it's massive spending to help pull the country and its financial system out of an economic nose dive unseen in decades.

Obama's nominee to be health secretary, Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, still has not been confirmed by the Senate and will not be present, nor will there be a designee.

Later in the day, the president will visit CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. The White House says the president will be holding private meetings with CIA employees and delivering a public message on the agency's importance to national security.

Obama's visit to the spy agency was clearly timed to buck up officials and workers there after his authorization last week of the release of a series of memos on interrogation methods approved under President George W. Bush. In an accompanying statement, he said "it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice, that they will not be subject to prosecution." He did not specifically address the policymakers.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said in a Sunday television interview that Obama does not intend to seek prosecution of Bush administration officials who devised the policies that led to the harsh interrogation of suspected terrorists.

Emanuel said that the president believes they "should not be prosecuted either and that's not the place that we go."

The decision not to seek charges against the interrogators has been criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union and called a violation of international law by the UN's top torture investigator.

Republican lawmakers and others contend that national security was undermined by the release of the memos. On Sunday, Obama administration officials pushed back vigorously against that claim.

"We are absolutely confident that we have the tools necessary to get the information we need to keep this country safe," senior presidential adviser David Axelrod said Sunday. "And we don't believe and the president of the United States does not believe that this is a contest between our values and our security. He thinks we can honor both and execute both. And that's what he's going to do."

Michael Hayden, who led the CIA under Bush, said the public release of the memos will make it harder to get useful information from suspected terrorists being detained by the United States.