Posted on 02/26/2013 12:42:12 PM PST by SeekAndFind
To hear President Obama and the Cabinet officials he has been steadily trotting out like show ponies tell it, the sequester cuts cannot, must not happen, because we’ll subsequently be hit with all kinds of disasters just short of a plague of locusts. Come on, White House, get it together --- I don't know that the sequester is the best specific way to get this done either, and maybe defense-related spending is getting the short end of the stick, but not even the Department of Interior can manage their devastating, draconian budget cuts, really? It's almost like you're trying to tell us that the Obama administration has discovered the absolutely optimal size of the federal bureaucracy, that everything the government currently does is nothing less than essential, and that the feds know how to spend our dolla' dolla' bills much better than we do --- so those miserly rich people better start paying up their even bigger fair share, stat!
Which is precisely why the sequester is a sort of existential crisis for the federal government: If sequestration happens and, miraculously, we manage to avoid mass calamity, that could present a real problem for President Obama's big-liberal-government thesis that we need to hike taxes even more to pay for all of the ostensibly indispensable things the government does on our behalf, as well as make Republicans’ calls for further, substantive deficit reduction all the more reasonable.
One of Obama’s complaints has been that, by law, the sequester doesn’t afford enough flexibility in the way the cuts are implemented, but Republicans have offered up some possible solutions to that particular pickle — and yet the White House still isn’t even remotely satisfied. I wonder why that could be?
Krauthammer nails it. Via RCP, click the image to watch:
Cutting is always attractive in the abstract but in the details it rarely is because there are constituencies who get affected if you have cuts. But the cynicism of the campaign of this administration is astonishing. The assumption is that somehow at every stage of the expansion of the liberal federal government we have reached a platonic ideal and that if you cut a dollar off that, it’s as if God had devised exactly the size of government America needs and any cut leads to Armageddon.
What we’re talking about here is two cents on the dollar. Every dollar the government spends today, 35 cents is borrowed from the Chinese and others. What is going on here is ending up in a position where we borrow not 35, but 33 cents, and that is going to bring Armageddon. An example of the cynicism of this campaign, is one lobbyist for the liberal causes leading 3,000 organizations in opposing the cuts, who told The Washington Post the following: ‘The worst case scenario is the sequester hits and nothing really bad happens.’
Think of the cynicism of that. The worst case scenario is that the government makes a small, minuscule cut in spending on the way to beginning of a journey of recovery in to fiscal health, and that it doesn’t hurt us, we actually come out of it alive. And, that to them, is the worst case. It means, think of how they are weighing the national interest, which needs a cut in spending and these parochial special interests.
I am inclined to agree. However, will the media portray it as such? I highly doubt it.
Charles, are you new to this country?
Nothing ever embarrasses the left, NOTHING.
If sequestration happens, and there are no issues, it will be ignored. Any problems will be magnified as much as possible.
I watched CNN’s coverage of O’s speech at Newport News earlier today. The new narrative is, yeah, people aren’t going to see problems on Saturday or Monday, but they will start to see problems in March or April — extended unemployment &c.
If that’s true, it was never allowed to be reported. The Message is definitely being tweaked a little bit.
I predict that ANY problem that happens from now until 2014 will be attributed to sequestration, and the blame will be pinned on the Republicans. The media will make sure of it.
The Obamedia will have to make sure we know of our deep misery and the poll numbers that say Obama is not to blame and the Republicans are killing old people and children.
That goes without saying.
I'm still counting on the Sun coming up on Mar. 1st, the grocery stores will have food and the bars will have booze.
And Obama will look silly.
No it’s not. Nothing embarrasses the Left. These people proudly support infanticide and adultery.
Whatever the outcome, the Left will take credit and place any blame on the Republicans. And the whole media will carry their water.
Never, NEVER let a “crisis” go to waste!
And, if there is no “crisis” — just CREATE one!
The media will find someone affected by the Sequester, out behind a McDonalds, dumpster diving.
Oh, for heaven’s sake. That line of you-know-what smells just like the “we’ll never know how bad the economy would have gotten if we DIDN’T spend ourselves into oblivion!”
All problems from January 2009 through February 2013 are Bush’s fault. All problems after March 1, 2013 are the fault of the Republicans controlling the House of Representatives.
George W. Bush officially goes into retirement on Friday.
Bingo. They are going to create a MAJOR disaster. Doesn’t matter how many people get killed, because human lives mean nothing to these people.
What’ll happen Charlie boy? Can we count on a really, really extended eyebrow peak on your face? That’ll show ‘em.
That’s why Obama is releasing “differently documented” immigrants from prison — to make sure it’s a disaster. Alinsky rules!
“Bingo. They are going to create a MAJOR disaster. Doesn’t matter how many people get killed, because human lives mean nothing to these people.”
Wall street correction. And now we will hear about the spike in oil prices and the high cost of food. All blamed on the Republicans.
“‘The worst case scenario is the sequester hits and nothing really bad happens.’”
Obama and Co. will do whatever it takes to ensure that bad things happen. See the threads about releasing “waves” of illegal aliens, in advance of the sequester cuts. That’s an example of a classic textbook maneuver for fighting budget cuts — cut the most popular or critical programs first. (By “textbook”, I mean actual textbooks — I studied this in a graduate school course on finance and budgeting.)
it will go down the media memory hole after a few weeks of Obama using black women and children as props.
Here in NoVa, Fairfax county executive (big lib of course) blamed the 2012 economy on the “upcoming sequester”... So for the first time we have an entire county that jumped ahead to an alternate timeline that included an actual cut in government spending.. It has absolutely nothing to do with the abysmal economy created by Obama’s policies.
They actually believe this.
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