President Obama and his media allies are pushing the notion that
sequester will destroy Western Civilization. States are saying that
the cuts will devastate the economy; the Pentagon insists they will
"hollow out" the military. Eight hundred thousand civilian DOD
employees will have to take a 20% pay cut. Head start is at risk.
All manner of chaos will descend if we trim the Discretionary Budget
from 1,034 billion to 950 billion!
Don't believe it for an instant.
Start with Defense spending. The US now spends 19% of its budget on
Defense. The sequester would drop it to 18%. Big deal! That's the
same percentage it was in 2000. Under Obama, the Defense budget has
risen from $545 billion to $605 billion. Sequester will reduce it
back to $563 billion -- still more than when Obama took office.
It is absurd to suggest that this cut will endanger American
security. Under Reagan, defense rose to 29% of the budget. But
since the early 1990s, it has run between 18 and 20 percent and
these cuts would leave it still within this range.
The domestic non-defense cuts are even less likely to cause major
damage. Non defense discretionary spending has risen under
Obama from $468 billion to $514 billion. Sequester would drop
it back to the same level as it was when Obama took office. As
a percent of the budget, this category has dropped from 18% of the
budget when Clinton took office to 16% now. Sequester would
drive it down to 15%. Again, big deal!
To pretend that driving spending down to pre-Obama levels will be a
disaster is on its face ridiculous.
But, of course, under the ground rules of sequester -- approved by
Obama -- the president decides where to cut. Congress only
specifies the amount. Of course, like any big city mayor
pleading for more state aid, the president is projecting the worst
possible cuts, maintaining that core programs will have to be
jettisoned.
Obama is like a person going on a diet who proposes amputation of a
limb as opposed to eating less to reach his weight goal.
Don't buy any of it. Sequester will have only minimal effect
on government services.
Obama's contention that it will devastate the economy is even more
ludicrous. The president has just signed almost $300 billion
of tax increases into law for 2013 -- about 2% of our GDP. To
pretend that these are OK, but an $85 billion cut in spending will
cause the economy to collapse is just absurd.
Sequester is a process Obama agreed to. Republicans would be
quite willing to cut entitlements rather than government spending or
defense. But Obama won't hear of it. Obama, for his
part, would be happy to see $85 billion in more taxes with no
spending cuts. But the Republicans won't go along. So
let both sides stop pretending that sequester is the end of the
world. The Republicans should back off their contention that
it would collapse our defenses and the Democrats from
Their argument is that it would destroy poor people and ruin our
so-called economic recovery.
All sequester would do is to undo the spending excesses of the Obama
years.
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