A Desperate Obama Attempts to Unite Several Agencies

Why is Obama bringing this sort of unification up now and does it really put a fat government on a diet?

According to Reuters today, President Barack Obama will be asking Congress today for the authority to, "fold together trade agencies to help boost exports, a reorganization that could help inoculate him against Republican election-year charges that he is a big-government liberal."

Obama claims that he is doing this in order to make the government leaner and more efficient by reducing bureaucratic involvement in export-oriented companies as an answer to, not just rival Republican accusations, but also as a response to concerns over huge deficits and the current abnormally large size of the federal government.

More specifically, Obama wants to fold together the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), the U.S. Export-Import Bank, Overseas Private Investment Corp, the Trade and Development Agency, the Small Business Administration and parts of the Commerce Department. This wouldn't be the first time that he has asked for this, however. Just last March, Obama asked White House budget officials to take a look at such a merger in order to save money and make U.S. export promotion as efficient as possible.

A White House official said the goal was to save $3 billion over a period of 10 years, while also leading to a loss of 1,000 - 2,000 jobs through attrition.

Now I'm no math expert, but uhhhh in kindergarten I learned that when you add 4 individual apples together, you STILL pretty much get.......... four apples. True there MIGHT be about 1 to 2 thousand jobs lost, but what we're still going to be left with is a large bureaucracy. In other words, he may 'say' that this is making big government more lean, but this could also, in effect, create a larger agency that holds even MORE power. I mean come on, we've all seen the FDA labels on just about EVERYTHING we eat. Do we really want to see an 'FDA' label on everything we export too now?

No, I think the attempt was cute and I think that Obama is trying to make a somewhat intelligent counter-move to stave off accusations of supporting big government, while creating an even bigger government (not bigger in volume of employees, but certainly bigger in power and authority).

Republicans were caught slightly off guard from this bold move, but it looks like they will be reserving judgment until they see more details of what Obama is actually, and more specifically, proposing.

Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, says that "After presiding over one of the largest expansions of government in history, and a year after raising the issue in his last State of the Union, it's interesting to see the president finally acknowledge that Washington is out of control."

expected to help achieve his goal of doubling U.S. exports in 5 years, from $1.57 trillion in 2009 to $3.14 trillion by 2015. Okay okay I get it! He wants to STAY in office. Sheesh. So is his claim real and are his intentions sincere? Or is this calculated to simply extend his tenure? I tend to lean towards the latter, but only time will tell...

Over and Out,

- Peter

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