This won’t come as a shock to any of our financially-savvy readers, but today President Obama announced that there will be cuts in the budget in order to respond to the economic crunch. According to the New York Times:

‘œWe can no longer afford to spend as if deficits do not matter and waste is not our problem. . . We can no longer afford to leave the hard choices for the next budget, the next administration ‘” or the next generation.’

The savings for the budget year starting Oct. 1 represent the sum of Mr. Obama’s promised ‘œline by line’ scrubbing of the federal budget, and the the proposed cuts amount to about 1.4 percent of the $1.2 trillion deficit that is projected for the fiscal year 2010.

This makes a lot of sense, ya’ll. When your household finances change, your budget has to change, too. So what’s on the cut list? A total of 121 federal programs, to be exact. You can read the NY Times article for a complete list, but here’s a quick summary:

* Literacy programming
* An education attache to UNESCO
* Missile defense, the F-22, and Navy ship building

While the $17 billion in projected savings represents a small portion of the proposed budget, Mr. Obama insisted that ‘œthat’s a lot of money, even by Washington standards.’ It was enough to pay for a $2,500 tuition tax credit for millions of students, for larger Pell education grants, he said, ‘œwith enough money left over to pay for everything we do to protect the National Parks.’

Cutting a budget down to a manageable size is never an easy task, but it clearly has to be done. America’s deficit spending is being financed by China. And while I don’t have anything against China, I still think this is a dangerous position for the US to be in. I’ve watched “The Sopranos.” You eventually have to pay the mafia boss. Better to reduce the amount you owe than to have your kneecaps busted, right?