(Post 2009 figures are budgetary estimates!)

Barack Obama presented his $3.8 trillion budget yesterday to muted fanfares of fiscal responsibility and chagrin of NASA cuts. Obama’s budget seeks to rein in government spending while delicately attempting to revive the America’s flagging economy.

While the American press is hopping on the palitable story of how NASA’s Constellation program has been chopped off at the knees, the real meat. The real message of the budget is jobs, jobs, jobs.

The US jobless trend is scary. The past two years have seen the number of people seeking work double from 5% to almost 10%. These highs have not been seen since the early 1980′s.

Obama is addressing the weak employment numbers by applying over a $100B in stimulus programmes to staunch the flow of new jobless. Despite the announcement of the tax cuts for small businesses that hire employees, Obama’s budget forsees the percentage those out of work to drop ever slow slightly to average at 9.2%. Perhaps a nod to further economic weakness before Budget 11 comes into force on October 1st next?

The elephant in the room, however, is the US’s widening national debt now standing at over $12.2B. With the biggest deficit in history, can Obama’s reform pump the much needed stimulus in the US economy?

Budget 11 facts:

• $53B in tax cuts
• $30B in tax breaks to incentivise small business to hire new employees
• $6B for clean energy tech innovation
• $735M for full body scanners in airports
• $15.5B proposal aimed at IP from US firms being floated to international subsiduries in tax havens
• 3 year freeze on non-military and medical aid spending – aims to save $447B
• End to fossil fuel subsidies, raising $90B over next ten years
• 10 year old tax rates for the rich reinstated: 36% tax rate for single people earning $200k and over (up 3%), 36.9% for couples earning $250k and over (up 4.6%)
• New bipartisan fiscal commission composed of Democrats and Republicans
• Budget 11 kicks off Oct 1

Despite Obama’s tough love budget trying to balence the need to shave off unnecessary spending and apply the right sort of stimulus into the American economy, his stern hand on the tiller freezing Federal spending for three years might be too much for his Dem colleagues in the Congress. Pelosi has already been commenting that spending freezes should include Defence.

President Obama just delivered an address on today’s Budget 11. Some of the key takeaways of the speech:

• More than 6% increase to Education Dept
• Eliminate wasteful subsidy to banks that provide loans to college students
• A Goverment spending freeze for 3 years. MedicAid, MedicCare, Dept of Defence and veterans benefits go untouched.
• This year, $20B was cut from the budget. It’s a continuation of the $17B in cuts found last year.
• Examples of areas cut – mining cleaning program, forest service cuts, refurbishment of a facility belonging to the Dept of Energy
• Other cuts were more painful – eliminate a Government program to clean buildings. A $120m program to get earned income tax credit in advance, Obama said 80% of people didn’t comply with terms of program.
• Obama asked for asking Democrats and Republicans to look at the spending of programmes
• The SAVE programme that asked fed employees to suggest improvements taken into account.
• Even though Department of Defence is exempt from budget freeze, not exempt from sensible decision-making. Obama

• Cut to taxes for the Middle Class are up, but big earners e.g. individuals that earn over $250k a year an oil companies are not exempt from cuts.

Obama finished off his speech by proposing a bipartisan fiscal commission. He said the idea had strong bipartisan support citing a lot of Republican cosponsors for the initiative. Despite it getting voted down in the Senate, he said it was a needed if American had to go ahead and fully embrace to get it’s “arms around the budget”.

Obama continued by saying that politicians needed to readopt the Pay As Go rule, so if money is needed for programmes it must be found from other programmes. He said this approach lead to budget surpluses of the 1990s.

More details on Budget 11 on budget.gov.

More analysis to come

You can watch the questioning live on the inquiry website.

If there video is a little too small for you and you’d like to see live commentary, check out the BBC’s coverage on their site. A little IP spoofage may be necessary.

The Guardian also has a nice rolling commentary of the questioning.

Blair is expected to be in the hotseat until 5pm this evening. The coming weeks see Clare Short, John Reid and  Jack Straw before the inquiry.

Photo: BBC livestream

The BBC is reporting that Gordon Brown will appear before the Chilcot Inquiry into Iraq *before* the General Election in the Summer. This could have a massive effect on performance of the out-going government in June’s elections.

It was thought that if Brown appeared before the General Election, it would be used like a political football prior to the election, so plans for his appearance were being shelved until after the Summer.

Things took a turn when Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg applied pressure on Brown by asking him what he had to hide and if he would do so before the elections. As expected, opposition MPs jumped on this and Brown was left with little choice, but to volunteer.

In recent days, Brown wrote to the Sir John Chilcot’s investigation offering to appear before the election.

Former PM Tony Blair will before the inquiry at the end of this month.

Photo: Dreamstime (1990)

Apologies on the blogging front. Election.ie has been a little quiet. Yoyoing between bouts of panic buying gouge-happy stuff for burning and combining the odd reminents left in my press into new meal concoctions. Hello meat stuff with goopy onion tapenade. Darina, how are ya?

On a night where the rebellion against Brown looks well and truly alive, it is interesting to see the financial disclosures of spending in European Elections by UK political parties.

The Electoral Commission released figures yesterday showing just over £9 million was spent by UK political parties for campaigning for the Euros. Some 80% of the amount was spent by the Tories, Labour, Lib Dems and United Kingdom Ind Party.

Breakdown of the spending by the parties:

(Table snipped)

Over Christmas, Suzy linked to the SIPO report to the Ceann Comhairle on spending by Irish political parties for their European campaigns. Very interesting reading there!

There’s such a plethora of news applications in Apple’s App Store, that’s it’s rare I come across a gem I have to share. The BBC World News Live application is one such find. While it’s not new, it’s one that’s dead handy to have in your pocket.

The BBC World News Live application developed by Livestation streams the World News service channel through your iPhone. If you are on wifi, it streams high-quality video and if you’re on 3G, then you are served lower-quality but still watchable video.

This morning between avoiding getting up to pack for home, I watched Alan Cummings host a documentary on cabaret clubs from Weimar through the Second World War. Sumptuousness.

Screen capture from the BBC World News Live iPhone application

Basescu on the election trail

Results from the hotly contested Romanian Presidential election broke last night. The Incumbant Traian Basescu, former Mayor of Bucharest, narrowly defeated his challenge, Social Democrat leader Mircea Geoana by a mere 0.6% of the vote – 50.3% to 49.7%.

Accusations of vote fraud are jumping left, right and centre from Geoana and his party.

The IMF stepped in earlier this year to prop up the ailing Romanian economy to the tune of $30 billion. Interestingly enough, the IMF released a survey last week citing it’s influence in preventing economic meltdown and calling for political reform in Eastern Europe – Latvia and Romania were called out especially. The very narrow election win margin coupled with bitter allegations of unsound electoral practices is the last thing that the IMF wants to hear.

A closer look at the precarious position of the government shows, the dangers run much deeper. Romania’s coalition government collapsed in October under a storm of alleged plans to enact voting fraud on massive scale to influence the outcome of the Presidential election. The junior partner party in government, the Social Democrats, withdrew from government leaving Besescu’s party, the Liberal Democrats, as a minority government with a budget for next year to pass through parliament. The pressure cooker of fingers of fraud being pointed and a minority government trying to draft and agree a budget was enough for the IMF to withhold €1.5 billion out of the €20 billion financial package to the country until a new government is formed and reform is seen to be progressing.

Romania was one of the fastest growing economies in the EU before the recessionary wave. With  a healthy GDP rate of 6.2% in 2007 and an unemployment rate of 3.9% in September of that year it was one of the best positioned economies to benefit the geographic slide of multinational investment from Western European and the US. In stark contrast, the World Economic Forecasts estimates the country’s GDP numbers to be in the region of -8.5% this year and a flat 0.5% in 2010.

Jobless numbers are also on the rise. October’s unemployment numbers stood at 7.1%, a 0.2% rise on the previous month. Eagle-eyed economists believe that those out of work will hit 8% before the year’s end. Unemployment now stands at a five-year high.

Some twenty years on from the bloody Romanian revolution, could the bite of economic woes kindle  memories of Communist entitlement?

It’s interesting to note that Romania was the only member of the Iron Curtain that executed its leader. Will the cut and thrust of the economic collapse backed by swell of public pain and political pressure force Basescu into a corner? Only time will tell.