Before one dime of government spending actually gets cut as debt ceilings or continuing resolutions (in lieu of budgets) expire, we learn who the President cares about less than his White House staff.
First, during the approaches to the breaches of debt ceilings in 2011 and 2012, our Chief Executive threatened interest payments to holders of U.S. debt (i.e. default), military pay and Social Security checks to which the elderly and disabled are entitled. This despite the fact that tax receipts greatly exceed all three combined.
Now, with only puny, automatic across-the-board (sequester) discretionary and defense spending cuts absent the first budget deal since the last one reached by President George W. Bush and a Democratic House and Senate, President Obama, fresh from his golf-with-Tiger-in-Florida vacation, spewed forth the following threats from the 19th Hole:
The president has announced meat inspectors will be furloughed and food shortages will result. His cabinet secretaries are threatening three-hour waits at airports to clear security, reducing embassy protection and border patrols, cutting the Persian Gulf Naval presence from two aircraft carriers to one, and the list goes on …. diminished emergency services, longer airport security lines and other problems if Congress fails to reach agreement on avoiding the harshest impacts of automatic, across-the-board spending cuts set to begin March 1.
With firefighters, police officers and other emergency responders standing behind him, Obama said that ‘people will lose their jobs’ if the forced cuts are allowed to take effect.
He listed a litany of possible impacts intended to inspire public outrage at the potential new reality caused by the spending cuts, such as fewer police and firefighters on the streets, reduced military readiness, less border security, and criminals going free because federal prosecutors will have to close cases.
‘Air traffic controllers and airport security will see cutbacks, which means more delays at airports across the country,’ Obama continued. ‘Thousands of teachers and educators will be laid off. Tens of thousands of parents will have to scramble to find child care for their kids. Hundreds of thousands of Americans will lose access to primary care and preventive care like flu vaccinations and cancer screenings.’
‘If Congress allows this meat-cleaver approach to take place, it will jeopardize our military readiness, it will eviscerate job-creating investments in education and energy and medical research, it won’t consider whether we’re cutting some bloated program that has outlived its usefulness or a vital service that Americans depend on every single day,’ Obama said. ‘It doesn’t make those distinctions.’
Meat-cleaver? Sequestration requires that only 2% of the budget be cut. “It” doesn’t make “distinctions”? President Obama will have the discretion as the Chief Executive of the Executive Branch of the federal government to execute the puny cuts required by the clever device first suggested to Congress by himself via his White House Budget Director (and now Treasury Secretary nominee) Jack Lew.
But not to worry, Mr. Obama has not yet suggested that Mrs. Obama will have to return home with the children from their concurrent but overlapping Colorado ski vacation early, or on Amtrak.
Clearly, no government employee need lose their job due to the puny sequester even with the Obamacare tax-minding IRS and the job-killing EPA over populated. But given the long list of potential victims threatened by Obama today and during earlier insistences by adults (Republicans) in the room that our Boy President must confront the National Debt bully that keeps taking his lunch money with something other than another tax hike on the rich, it might be best for his sycophant press to stay between him and Michelle and window ledges above 15 feet.
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson
