Obama to Order Cabinet to Quickly Cut $100 Million From Department Budgets

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Obama Tells Cabinet to Make $100 Million in Cuts

President Barack Obama has ordered his Cabinet to come up with $100 million in savings, but he acknowledges that's just a drop in the bucket of federal spending. Video by AP

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Veterans Affairs has canceled or delayed 26 conferences, opting for less costly alternatives such as video conferencing, saving nearly $17.8 million. The Agriculture Department is working to combine 1,500 employees from seven office locations into one facility in 2011, which the agency said would save $62 million over a 15-year lease term. Also, Homeland Security projects that it can save up to $52 million over five years by buying office supplies in bulk, officials said.

According to the White House, the Agriculture Department is working with the Treasury Department to "identify potential fraud and improper payments in farm programs." Starting with the 2009 crop year, all recipients of farm program payments will be required to grant Treasury the authority to provide income information to the Agriculture Department for verification purposes, it said. Recipients found "out of compliance" would be ineligible for future payments, and savings could reach $16 million a year, the White House said.

Last week, conservative activists organized tea parties to protest Obama's budget, which they say "spends too much, taxes too much, and borrows too much from our children and grandchildren," according to House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio).

"They're really concerned about the amount of spending that's going on in Washington and the amount of debt that is being piled up," Boehner said yesterday on ABC's "This Week." "They know that you can't have trillion-dollar deficits for as far as the eye can see without imprisoning the future for our kids and theirs."

In his radio and Internet address Saturday, Obama repeated his vow for his administration to scour the federal budget "line by line" to reduce spending. During an address to Congress in February, Obama said his administration has identified $2 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade.

That savings projection, however, rests on a dubious baseline, including assuming that the United States would have retained its current troop level in Iraq for the next decade. The reduction also contemplates expiration of tax cuts for the nation's highest income earners.

While the Obama administration has begun stressing tentative signs of improvement in the economy, it appears likely that some of the nation's largest banks will need additional help, top White House officials said. However, they said, the administration should be able to provide that help without asking Congress for more money.

The Obama administration is moving closer to releasing some results of the "stress tests" aimed at projecting how the nation's largest 19 banks would withstand further deterioration in the nation's economic condition.

"We're confident that, yes, some are going to have very serious problems, but we feel that the tools are available to address these problems," David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president, said yesterday on CBS's "Face the Nation."

Officials said that the administration should be able to provide additional bailout money if necessary without returning to an increasingly skeptical Congress for further authorizations.

The administration plans to release guidelines for the stress tests this week, and it hopes to make results available in early May. "It's important that there is disclosure," Axelrod said. "And I think the banks are going to want that because they're going to want the markets and the country and the world to know exactly what their condition is."

Obama yesterday wrapped up a visit to Mexico and the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago, where he attended a summit of Caribbean and Latin American leaders. He now will turn his attention back to domestic issues, aides said.