Tip Jar

3/07/2013

O’s Rx: maximize America’s pain

Via-NY POST

Michael Walsh


Planning on taking the kids to see the White House this spring? Forget about it: “Due to staffing reductions resulting from sequestration, we regret to inform you that White House tours will be canceled effective Saturday, March 9, 2013, until further notice,” says a recorded message at the visitors’ center.

OK, what about a trip to the sunny, scenic southwest? Maybe not: The Department of Homeland Security has already released 2,000 illegal aliens facing criminal deportation, and promises to set lose another 3,000 by month’s end.

Of course, you may want to just stay home anyway, with the TSA threatening longer lines and wait times at the nation’s airports, thanks to “budget cuts” brought on by the sequester. But don’t cry for the authorized gropers at the security checkpoints — they’re getting a $50 million makeover for some snazzy new uniforms.

It’s all in a day’s misery for the permanent campaign known as the Obama administration, which never lets a crisis go to waste, even if it has to manufacture one. But what else should we have expected from a president who would rather give a speech than meet with congressional leaders, throw a party than get down to governing and go golfing instead of forcing his allies in the US Senate to actually pass a budget.

Indeed, that Obama should turn his fondness for “punishment” into an instrument of national policy is no surprise. He’s the guy, after all, who told Latino voters in 2010 to “punish your enemies” at the ballot box.

And it’s not as if we weren’t warned. In the runup to the sequester, which cuts a whopping 2 percent of this year’s projected federal spending, Obama and other administration officials threatened apocalyptic consequences should this “fiscal Doomsday Machine” (created at Obama’s behest!) actually happen.

Such harum-scarum tactics were ridiculous, duly mocked by Saturday Night Live over the weekend. A grand total of zero programs will be actually be eliminated. Yet the administration seems determined to inflict as much inconvenience on the public as possible, to give the illusion of chaos along the banks of the Potomac.

In an e-mail to an official of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (part of the Department of Agriculture), a North Carolina official was told he had no latitude in managing cuts: “You need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be,” came the word from Washington.

The real reason behind the vise-tightening has nothing to do with money, though. It’s all political, the kickoff to the 2014 congressional elections.

The GOP managed to hang on to its House majority last fall — and under the Constitution all spending bills must originate in the House. But the president told House Democrats last month that he means to make Nancy Pelosi the speaker yet again.

And he pointedly said of GOP spending-cut ideas versus his own tax-hike proposals, “If that’s an argument they want to have before the court of public opinion, that’s an argument I’m more than willing to engage in.”

To continue to run up record annual trillion-dollar deficits and spend borrowed or printed money on “entitlements” heading for inevitable bankruptcy, Obama needs a supine House to get with his program of “fundamental transformation” and spend, spend, spend.

No pain, no electoral gain — that’s the theory, and thus the president wants the nation to feel lots of pain.

So scrub those plans to see the Lincoln Bedroom, cancel that trip to Tucson and leave today for your flight tomorrow. As Obama said in his victory speech in Chicago the night he won the 2008 election, “change has come to America.”

How do you like it now?

4 comments:

  1. Hi Jer and friends.
    On the drive home this evening I heard two commercials(20 min drive). Those two commercials were from the EPA and the add council.
    I thought to myself .... I listen to this radio station 40 mins a day 5 days a week,and I can think of at least 6 different radio adds from x agency and the add council.

    I know its chump change in the large portion of the budget. But there are most likely millions of these small examples that add up to at least a large portion of the (non military) part of the sequester/budget cuts.
    Its obvious that Obama and his ilk want the most pain inflicted via the smallest of cuts. We dont need a leaked email to prove it.
    And as I type I am wondering if the drastic cutbacks Obama is needlessly employing might actually cut more than the sequester. And if so? are the Gov agencies going to scramble to spend the leftover monies at the end of the fiscal year ,like so many often do?

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  2. Brass tax and sequester:
    Our economy hasnt rebounded above pre great recession levels.
    Gov expenditures have increased every year during the extended slowdown. One time stimulus has become baseline budget.The Gov will spend more the next year after sequester than the year before sequester.

    So why cant we just remove the past 4 years added spending Accounting for inflation and some portion of population growth?

    Just a thought

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  3. If the economy,inflation and population havent grown that much then the gov shouldnt have to spend that much more.
    Is the Dog(Gov) walking us? Or are we walking the Dog?

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  4. I will "give" to one Leftist sentiment on this: You cant withdraw from gov and populace dependency on money "from thin air" all at once. but you sure can show harsh tough love combined with tasty incentives toward growth.

    Ok, carry on....
    Spathy has vented the the thoughts for the evening.

    ReplyDelete