It would be foolish to put much faith in the estimates of both new domestic initiatives and the cost of two wars. The war tax originally was proposed at five percent but the president was pressured by his advisers to double it. Ultimately LBJ was forced to ask Congress to approve a tax surcharge to pay for Vietnam. Paying for the war in Vietnam and the Great Society at the same time put enormous strain on the treasury. Johnson’s approach to accounting included using the once sacrosanct Social Security Trust funds as part of the general fund budget. Nothing comes to mind as much as President Lyndon Johnson’s guns and butter budgets that historians have blamed for setting the stage for fiscal insolvency. But partnered with the enormous cost of the proposed health care plan alone - reportedly between $850 billion plus and $1.2 trillion over the next decade, depending on whose bill is adopted - the enormity of the numbers is overwhelming. Under normal circumstances that might not seem a lot. Where do we get the money for all this? The price tag for the surge of 30,000 troops and the troops already there is conservatively estimated at more than $100 billion and that is just the initial outlay. The White House declined to comment on the summer gig.įile Under: How She Spent Her Summer Vacation.Ĭhristopher Evans contributed to this report.President Barack Obama’s decision to escalate, temporarily at least, the war in Afghanistan is not only a political gamble it is an economic one as well coming as it does in the face of the huge fiscal demands of his domestic policy. The first daughters did get to meet “ Deadpool” star Ryan Reynolds at the White House fete and a picture of Sasha greeting the actor as Malia gave her two thumbs up went viral. “We tried to normalize their lives as much as possible.” “We generally don’t include the girls,” first lady Michelle Obama told “Entertainment Tonight” at the time. Sasha and her older sister Malia, who will attend Harvard University in 2017 after taking a “gap year,” just attended their first-ever state dinner in March. Which may be why they are letting Sasha get a taste of working a summer job in a resort area - a big change from life in the nation’s capital. The Obamas have been attempting to raise their daughters as normally as possible, considering their dad’s job and all. “She’s been around for a few days,” one of the girls working the takeout window told us yesterday. Word is, she will only be working until Saturday when her parents arrive for their two-week vacation. The Obamas’ youngest daughter has been working an early four-hour shift at the busy, 350-seat restaurant, finishing up just a half hour after it opens for business at 11:30 a.m. The Obamas reportedly are friends with Nancy’s owner Joe Moujabber, which is how Sasha scored her summer gig. Nancy’s is a favorite stop for the First Family, who always pop in for a seafood feed when they are on their annual Martha’s Vineyard vacation. When her shift ended, Sasha and a friend, who also was wearing the navy blue Nancy’s T-shirt and baseball cap, brought a tray of drinks out to her security contingent, got in the SUV and took off. Sasha was accompanied to her summer job yesterday by a contingent of six Secret Service agents, who sat outside the restaurant in a large Suburban SUV and on the takeout benches while the president’s daughter waited on hungry tourists. “We were wondering why there were six people helping this girl, but then we found out who it was.” “She’s been working downstairs at takeout,” said a server at the busy island eatery. Sasha, who’s using her full name of Natasha at Nancy’s, has been learning the ropes of the service industry at the Oak Bluffs eatery this week, working a cash register, busing tables and prepping the restaurant before it opens for lunch. The First Daughter is working the takeout window at Nancy’s, a seafood restaurant on Martha’s Vineyard. Sasha Obama, who has lived eight of her 15 years in the luxurious confines of the White House, is learning how the other half lives this summer.
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