Sequestration: A flood of lies

DAYTONA BEACH SHORES -- Everyone knows that Barack Obama is a constant congenital liar. But since his inauguration diatribe and the masterpiece of mendacity that was his State of the Union address, I have given up trying to isolate individual untruths. Now I try, with decreasing success, to find something he says which is true.

But when we come to the impact of the sequester, which is only a tiny nibble at the rate of growth of Obama’s rapacious central government and not really a cut at all, the flood of crap coming out of the White House is so great that it is as if every cesspool in Chicago overflowed at once.

I confess that I expected the Congress and the White House to make a few meaningless nicks at the numbers and kick the bulk of the can down the road into the next fiscal year. That may yet happen but now that it seems more likely that the sequester will actually take effect, Obama has become President Chicken Little, screaming that the sky will fall, the earth will erupt and civilization will collapse if his plans for the overspending of $3.6 trillion are reduced by a mere 2.3%.  

I confess that I expected the Congress and the White House to make a few meaningless nicks at the numbers and kick the bulk of the can down the road into the next fiscal year. That may yet happen but now that it seems more likely that the sequester will actually take effect, Obama has become President Chicken Little, screaming that the sky will fall, the earth will erupt and civilization will collapse if his plans for the overspending of $3.6 trillion are reduced by a mere 2.3%.  

Given the level of waste and duplication in the federal government, any competent executive (Which is what Obama is supposed to be but is not) could direct his cabinet officers to make these small reductions in growth in such a way that they would hardly be noticed.

Instead he and his sycophants have concocted a poisonous stew of service disasters which would befall an American people increasingly dependent on such services, if the level of federal expenditure, the deficit and the debt are not permitted to further explode by every single penny that Obama demands.

The one exception may be Defense, where Obama has already reduced its ten year budget by almost half a trillion dollars and which the sequester further reduces by an additional $600 billion over the same period.

No matter what you may think of the size of our defense budget, a $1.2 trillion bite takes a big chunk out of flesh and bone.

No matter what you may think of the size of our defense budget, a $1.2 trillion bite takes a big chunk out of flesh and bone.

Thus the sequester, which requires that half the reductions in spending fall upon defense, advances one of Obama’s Marxist goals - to diminish the capacity of the United States as the world’s remaining super power.

But all the rest of the White House tale is s great mass of horror fiction.

Within the guidelines set forth by the Congressional authorization and appropriations processes, the executive branch has a considerable amount of leeway in determining exactly how monies will be spent within a specific department.

The Republicans are prepared to offer legislation which would increase Obama’s flexibility in this instance. The painful cuts which Obama and his minions are threatening us with need not be the cuts that are made. But Obama is not interested.

Keep one thing in mind: if the sequester’s spending reductions are implemented in the painful way which the President is threatening, it is because that is what he wants.

Now why would Obama want to impose program cuts harmful and painful to the American people? Perhaps it is just the bouquet of Chicago cesspool in the air, but I detect the stench of politics.

Even though the idea of the sequester originated in the White House, was approved by Democrats and Republicans in both Houses and signed into law by Obama himself, I believe that Obama is confident that his own oratory and the support he enjoys from his bought dogs in the media will absolve him and the Dems from whatever blame attaches to implementation of the sequester.

Even though the Republican House has passed two bills proposing wiser, less painful reductions which would have enabled the implementation of the terms of the sequester, both were dismissed by the Democrats in the Senate. Obama presses for his own painful cuts in popular programs.

Obama believes that the media will ignore this fact and that he will be able to shift the blame for whatever pain is felt to the Republicans, who, he will continue to claim, forced implementation of the sequester and brought serial disaster to the people just to protect the rich from more tax increases.

If he is able to sell this lie, the Dems will propose several legislative fixes which would restore some of the cut programs and ride the resultant good feeling to victory in the 2014 elections. A large enough win in the two Houses would again give Obama the control he had during his first two years in the White House, with consequences for the country too dangerous to contemplate.

Also, keep in mind that the deficit and the debt are Obama’s primary weapons in his drive to collapse the American economy and create a crisis so great that he could replace our traditional republic with an authoritarian socialist regime with himself or a surrogate at its head.

Every additional trillion dollars that he can add to his bloated spending goals pushes the United States that much closer to bankruptcy. Every additional entitlement program that he can create (such as the idea of tying the minimum wage to the cost of living) grows our debt to unpayable levels and advances the day when our international trading partners will abandon the dollar as the global reserve currency and bring down our house of fiscal cards. And that would bring on his crisis.

Barack Obama is a grinning monster. He must be resisted at every turn. He must be stopped.

Barack Obama is a grinning monster. He must be resisted at every turn. He must be stopped.

Stan Escudero, Feb. 26, 2013