The good news: Budget cuts are coming!

The bad news: Not really.

At his first official meeting with his cabinet, President Obama laid down the law. Not wanting to waste one second of precious tax-payer funded time, he gave them this ultimatum: Cut $100 million off of their collective budgets.

That's right. Million. With a capital "M" for Money! Well, I guess there wasn't anything to worry about after all. Yes sir, we're out of the woods now. All of us tea party patriots can just put down our signs and rest easy knowing that President Obama is wasting no effort in safeguarding our money.

Are you serious? According to the WaPo, the president "acknowledged that the goal amounts to a drop in the bucket". No, Mr. President. Drop in a bucket doesn't even begin to cover it. In the three months you have been in office, Congress has passed your $3.5 Trillion (that's with a capital "T', for Tremendous) budget, which doesn't even include the hundreds of Billions of dollars you have pushed through congress.

An economist by the name of Greg Mankiw put it in easy layman's terms on his blog (Thanks to Maelyn for sending this to me).

"Just to be clear: $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 to 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."

Do not get me wrong: Any cut in monstrosity that is the Federal budget is still moving in the right direction. The problem is that they are using this cut as some sort of smoke-and-mirror game, to try to fool you into thinking that they are trimming back just like you and me. That somehow the fact that our debt is fast approaching our GDP doesn't matter, because they are making cuts too.

To try and pull a stunt like this is shameful, and it insults the intelligence of the American people. If your cuts turn into something substantial, Mr. President, then come and tell me. Till then, keep the dog and pony show to yourself.

P.S. If you stopped spending my money like it's going out of style, that would probably help too. I'm just saying.