Obama Trims 2010 Budget?

President Barack Obama is on the view to trim down 2010 budget by $17 billion from a 2010 budget that will still hover around $3.5 trillion. President Obama speaks during his 100-day anniversary news conference in the East Room of the White House. About half of the proposed cuts would come from the defense budget, and a total of 121 programs in areas including education would be trimmed or scrapped, one official told a conference call with reporters.

Even with the spending reductions, the White House's own estimates suggest the deficit will be $1.17 trillion next year. Congressional analysts believe the gap could be $1.4 trillion.Obama officials said the administration would look for further cuts in the 2010 fiscal year, which starts on October 1.This is an important first step but it's not the end of the process.Obama, who has vowed to cut the country's ballooning deficit in half by 2013, was widely panned last month when he challenged agencies to find $100 million in savings. Critics pointed out that was about equal to what the government spends in 13 minutes.

Congress has already passed a $3.4 trillion budget blueprint that will guide tax policy and government spending for the upcoming fiscal year. It embraces many of Obama's top priorities.
But the budget details the White House will release on Thursday, which build on a bare-bones outline the new president submitted to Congress on February 26, could have an impact on those individual spending bills that will wind their way through Congress in coming months.

Obama to fulfill a campaign promise

President of the United states Barack Obama has decided to fulfill a campaign promise and allow Cuban Americans and Cuban emigres to freely visit and send money to their families.A White House official confirmed the administration’s intentions to lift the restrictions, but said the measure was not a new policy statement and was not imminent.

The administration has conveyed that our policy towards Cuba is being reviewed and the president has stated that there’s a sense that restrictions on family visits and cash remittances should be lifted and the focus remains on the need for democratic reforms and human rights in Cuba.

The removal of limits on family travel and cash remittances would allow Cubans living in the United States to travel freely to the island, instead of once a year as at present. It would also remove the ceiling of $1,200 per person in cash remittances to needy family members in Cuba.

This is a good humanitarian move that honors Cuban Americans’ right to visit and aid their relatives as they see fit but it creates one class of Americans who can travel to Cuba at will, so it will add to the momentum in Congress to lift restrictions on all other Americans, who have a right to travel too. The move was probably meant to signal a new attitude toward both Cuba and other Latin American countries that have pressed Washington to end a trade embargo that has sought to isolate Havana for more than four decades.