The unscary sequester
Fear not. As always in Washington when there is talk of cutting spending, most of the hysteria is baseless. …
More troublesome are the cuts in defense, but for security not economic reasons. The sequester cuts the Pentagon budget by 7%. This fits Mr. Obama’s evident plan to raid the military to pay for social programs like ObamaCare.
But at least high priorities such as troop deployments are exempt from the cuts. And there is waste in the Pentagon: Start with the billions spent on “green energy” programs at DOD, bases that are no longer needed, and runaway health-care costs. Mr. Obama could work with Congress to pass those reforms so as not to cut weapons and muscle, but he has refused.
The most disingenuous White House claim is that the sequester will hurt the economy. Reality check: The cuts amount to about 0.5% of GDP. The theory that any and all government spending is “stimulus” has been put to the test over the last five years, and the result has been the weakest recovery in 75 years and trillion-dollar annual deficits.
Blowback
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When is a “cut” not a cut?
When the government “cuts” spending.
ProfShadow on February 7, 2013 at 2:44 PM
I agree, the sequestration is not very scary.
In the end … worst case – the cuts will be made ON PAPER … but five, ten years from now we’ll all be enlightened to the fact that, in reality … NO CUTS happened.
It’s like when Boehner passed that bill to cut
$100 BILLION$68BILLON from the annual budget last year. After passing the bill he went right to the White House and bargained that down to $38 Billion in cuts.Later … we were told, that actually – only about $400 million was actually “cut”.
LMFAO!!
HondaV65 on February 7, 2013 at 2:58 PM
Aargh. The sequester does not “raid the military.” Time for the GOP to drop that line.
First off, there are no cuts in the sequester. None. It’s all baseline budgeting. The cuts are actually cuts in the rate of growth, as is the case with all cuts Washington makes. There will still be spent more next year than this year. That’s not a cut.
Second, even if the cuts were real, and happened, we’d be taking the military back to the budget it had around 2008. That was hardly a time of fiscal austerity in our defense department. And our national security seemed to be okay, along with our ability to have our military entangled in conflicts and missions all around the world.
In short, let the sequester happen! There is nothing to fear from it, and it may be the only way in this Congress that we manage to get any cuts at all, even if they are just merely cuts in the rate of growth.
Shump on February 7, 2013 at 3:02 PM