Obama's Revenge
By DICK MORRIS
Published on
TheHill.com
on April 23, 2013
So many of the unattractive parts of the personality and presidency of
Barack Obama are evident in how he has handled the sequestration issue
-- and it's worth looking at for what it tells us about our president
and his administrative style.
Let's start with his detachment from the business of government and
administration. Confronted with a congressional mandate to cut about $40
billion in spending this year from a total non-defense discretionary
budget of about $600 billion, he just ordered across-the-board
reductions in proportion to the legislative totals.
When former President Truman faced a need to trim spending, he set up a
commission headed by former President Hoover to scour the government and
make specific recommendations, most of which he implemented. When former
President Clinton felt the weight of congressional pressure to cut
spending, he empowered then-Vice President Gore to set up a vast effort
to evaluate the procedures of every federal agency as part of his
program to "re-invent government." Gore produced hundreds of
suggestions, most of which were implemented by a willing chief
executive. The result was that Clinton and Gore cut the size of the
federal workforce to lower levels than existed during the Eisenhower
years.
But when Obama faced the same task, he took
the easy way out and just required proportional cutting. Rather than use
the cuts as an opportunity for prioritization and streamlining, he
lopped off the appropriate sum and called it a day.
The bald fact is that the president either could not or did not want to
be bothered to spend the time to identify $40 billion of waste, fraud
and duplication in a $600 billion budget. It was too much effort for
him.
But then, one wonders why he didn't just tell his Cabinet secretaries to
make the cuts and delegate them to do the research and scouring? Why go
with the furlough system for cutting spending? Why not lay off the
people we don't need? If we could get by with 7 percent less work by
federal employees, why not just fire 7 percent of them?
The answer is that Obama wanted to prune federal spending in such a way
that it could easily grow back again. Rather than close programs or
shutter agencies, he elected to ask everyone to take off one day in 10.
Once the sequester ends, they could go back to getting paid for all 10
days.
He never envisioned a cut in the size of government -- just a temporary,
short-term need to reduce spending for a few months before it resumes
its upward trajectory.
And, by refusing to prioritize, he ensured that the sequestration cuts
would affect everything, not just the optional areas of federal
activity. Instead of closing unnecessary jobs or eliminating some of the
duplicative agencies and functions the Government Accounting Office has
identified, he just furloughs everyone.
But most distressing is his insistence that furloughs operate to cripple
the most vital federal program: control of the skies through the Federal
Aviation Administration. With its thumb on the pulse of commerce in
America, the FAA's air traffic control function is probably the single
most important federal regulatory task. But the 13,000 air traffic
controllers have to take the same furloughs as the lowest inspector or
bureaucrat because of Obama's across-the-board cuts.
The resulting air delays will impede commerce and inconvenience millions
of people.
Is this happenstance? Or is the president deliberately targeting the
movers and shakers of our economy for delays and hardship? Is this his
revenge against the 1 percent that denied him their votes and support in
2012? Is he inwardly relishing their torment as the just reward for
insisting on cuts in federal spending in the first place?
Is this Obama's revenge?
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