Leaks we Can Believe in?
November 24th, 2008 by Nick SaintA mixed day for the rumor industry. A batch of cabinet nominees were announced, headed up by Geithner and Summers, as was widely expected. On the other hand, there’s this from Ben Smith:
Obama’s staff won’t elaborate, but the President-Elect said just now that he’d roll out a plan to cut the federal budget tomorrow — something both presidential candidates said they’d do, but neither detailed.
“[T]o make the investments we need, we’ll have to scour our federal budget, line-by-line, and make meaningful cuts and sacrifices as well – something I’ll be discussing further tomorrow,” Obama said.
He said later that he’d be rolling out “some reforms in Washington” tomorrow.
Where were the leaksters on this one? Now, speculation on the next Secretary of Agriculture is fun for the whole family, to be sure. But broad cutbacks on wasteful spending was a not insubstantial part of the whole ‘changing the way Washington works’ thing our next President couldn’t stop talking about during the election. Surely tomorrow won’t represent the final word on the subject, but this seems likely to be the most substantive look at an Obama administration in action to date, and putting together any sort of proposals along these lines would have taken some serious man power. Yet - as far as I know - no one reported this until it was officially announced. So maybe this team still isn’t that leaky when they really don’t want to be…
