Do you remember the Dilbert cartoon a few years back, where the clueless boss receives the shocking news that 40% of all absenteeism happens on Monday or Friday? In a tizzy, he asks his assistant if she understands what that means. She replies acidly that some people know how to do math.

Barack Obama just proposed a $3.6 trillion budget, far larger than Bush’s last budget. At 26% of GDP, it’s also a far larger share of our country’s total productivity than ever before in peacetime. (Bush’s budgets averaged around 20% of GDP.) And the non-partisan CBO projects a deficit this year of around $1.75 trillion, four times that of Bush’s final year.

So today’s news is that Barack Obama wants you to understand how important he thinks it is to reduce those deficits, and the overall size of the government in relation to the economy. (Someone must have informed him that we care about such things.) So he’s going to instruct his cabinet to find $100 million in immediate spending reductions.

Never mind that no self-respecting political manager will ever cut personnel, which form the bulk of their costs but also of their power base. If they’re going to cut anything at all, which I seriously doubt, they’ll cut it directly out of the services they render to the people.

Of course, Obama promised not once, but twice in last year’s debates that he would deliver a “net spending cut” as president. He’s got a long way to go for that.

So let’s give Obama credit for cutting government by $100 million. That’s 0.0027% of his first budget, and 0.0057% of his first deficit.

To put this start toward a net cut into terms that every American can visualize, this is roughly like having a baseball team made up of 3,600 Alex Rodriguezes downsize by cutting one-tenth of an A-Rod from the team. Which would look roughly like the image below (click for full size).

I think we’re supposed to be impressed, but unfortunately for Obama, some people know how to do math.