Shredding the Budget

   By now, anyone interested -- and even many who are not -- will have seen a breakdown of the president's proposed budget and the effects of sharp funding cuts, reductions, eliminations and shredding of many programs aided by the U.S. government.
   The consequences are also clear. Not only will many agencies, such as the State Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, have to eliminate many of its operations, but many people will also be put out of work.
   That part isn't mentioned by supporters of the president, who promised  a major surge in jobs under his leadership. And his response to criticism of the budget was to attack what he persistently calls the "fake, dishonest" news media. Oddly, journalists have based their stories on the budget itself, looking at the numbers and calculating the reductions that would result. The Whiner in Chief did not have much to say about the Congressional Budget Office, the bipartisan agency that reports to the House and Senate on potential repercussions of legislation being considered, and which was the source of many news articles on the proposed budget.
   And the bottom line remains that the proposed budget is just that -- a proposal. Congress actually has the final say when it comes to authorizing funds for government operations. And a president, as chief executive, is also just that -- the one whose responsibility it is to carry out the wishes of Congress.
   A president does, of course, have veto power. But where would the government be if this president vetoed the very budget that he himself proposed, on the premise that Congress changed too much of it?
   And typically, rather than admit a miscalculation -- much less a mistake or an error -- on his part, the Whiner in Chief is blaming everyone else when he doesn't get his way.
   Meanwhile, he has left the Whinery at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington for yet another weekend of golf in Florida, at a cost to taxpayers of several million dollars a day for Secret Service protection and other activities that surround a president wherever he goes.
   Since becoming president, he has missed only one weekend for golf. Compare that to the number of times he roundly slammed his predecessor for his occasional golf outings. Remind me, did Barack Obama abandon the Oval Office every weekend, or did he stay in town to tend to business?