This morning President Barack Obama stood before the cameras in an election-year attempt to claim he wants to shrink the size of the federal government and lower spending. According to the administration, his new proposal to merge six trade and commerce agencies would save $3 billion over the next 10 years and eliminate 1,000 to 2,000 jobs. Great headline unless you consider that since taking office, Mr. Obama has increased the federal workforce (excluding Census and Postal workers) by 7%; adding more than 144,000 to the federal payroll.

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We now have the first sign that the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives will be holding the Obama administration accountable for it's over the top spending and hard to believe statistics. We also have the first sign of how the administration will react. Incoming Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-California) scheduled a meeting for today with Vice President Joe Biden, who oversees the administration's stimulus effort, to discuss accountability with regard to the $800+ billion stimulus bill and Mr. Biden has now postponed that meeting.

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The Obama administration has launched a two pronged defense regarding what the president recently named "the Sestak issue". Did the White House offer US Representative Joe Sestak (D-Pennsylvania) a job if he would drop out of his Democratic primary race with Senator Arlen Specter (D-Pennsylvania) in violation of federal law? According to White House Counsel Robert F. Bauer, it depends on what your definition of job is. And if Clintonesque word parsing isn't enough to keep President Obama and his team out of legal trouble, then it was former president Bill Clinton who is to blame.

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