Obama Skips A Latte

Greg Mankiw blasts Obama's latest cost saving measures:

 $100 million represents .003 percent of $3.5 trillion.

To put those numbers in perspective, imagine that the head of a household with annual spending of $100,000 called everyone in the family together to deal with a $34,000 budget shortfall. How much would he or she announce that spending had be cut? By $3 over the course of the year--approximately the cost of one latte at Starbucks. The other $33,997? We can put that on the family credit card and worry about it next year.

Yeah, it was pathetic in the grand scheme of things. But I thought it was a good sign that Obama understands totally valid concerns about future debt. If the tea-parties did nothing but remind Washington that many people out there do care about deficits and debt and spending - and rightly so - then you can almost forgive the opportunism and shrillness and amnesia about the last eight years that came with them. Still, it's only fair to give Obama some lee-way during his first year on long-term entitlement reform. He's pledged to tackle it, and better to keep him to that than to lob bombs and throw hissy fits right now. Joe Weisenthal adds his own thoughts.