“To govern is to choose. By missing Friday’s deadline for averting $85 billion worth of across-the-board spending cuts to defense and domestic programs, Congress and President Obama have chosen not to govern. Instead, each side has concluded that its interest lies in letting the “sequester” proceed as scheduled — and then trying to win the political blame game….”
—-The Washington Post, in its lead editorial today, as the sequester deadline passed.
While so many other Obama supporting media organizations continue to absolve the President for any responsibility in this disgraceful episode, his hometown newspaper, blue as blue can be, has been uniquely fair and objective on this issue. The Post’s blueness manifests itself in overly-gentle terms to describe conduct that deserves far harsher terms, much as Bob Woodward’s using the term “mistake” to describe President Obama’s claim that he didn’t propose the sequester in the first place, when the accurate term is certainly “lie.” For example, the Post editors, later in their piece, say this:
“A bill by Republican Sens. James M. Inhofe (Okla.) and Patrick J. Toomey (Pa.) would have given Mr. Obama a freer hand to decide where the budget ax should fall, thus mitigating the harm to national security and other public goods, at least in theory. It also failed; the White House had threatened to veto it anyway, saying that $85 billion is still too much cutting, which the GOP bill would skew in favor of unneeded defense items — and the GOP was just trying to “shift the focus away” from its refusal to compromise. No doubt the White House didn’t want to “own” potentially unpopular specific cuts any more than the House GOP does. (Two Democrats, including Virginia’s Mark R. Warner, voted to proceed on the bill.) “Washington has reached a strange place indeed” when the opposition party offers the president more control over spending — and he refuses it.”
“Washington has reached a strange place indeed when the opposition party offers the president more control over spending — and he refuses it” are mealy-mouthed weasel-words for “It is hypocritical, cowardly and cynical for a President to simultaneously warn about the cataclysmic results of automatic budget cuts while rejecting the opportunity to make the cuts less painful and disruptive.” And that is what the Post should have published, for it is fair and true.
It does not relieve Republicans of their shared responsibility for this fiasco to properly note that the President of the United States is intentionally the sequester cuts as damaging and painful as possible, including the weakening of national defense and many lay-offs, gambling that he can once again be successful in convincing his supporters, the sycophantic press, and a gullible public that it’s not his fault.
The last person who has the power and opportunity to avert a disaster has an ethical obligation to do so. When that person is the President of the United States, the duty is Constitutional as well as ethical.
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Facts: Washington Post
Graphic: Cal Buzz
Ethics Alarms 
And as such they should be ejected from the God Damn Senate for actively seeking to abdicate their Constitutionally mandated authority to the Chief Executive.
Right after, of course, every single Democrat is burned at the stake for refusing to even attempt to pass a budget in over 1400 days…
I agree, it’s abdication. But if the Senate abdicates, any President who doesn’t grap the gift doesn’t understand what he’s there for. Hint: it’s not to use national defense and people’s lives in a game of high stakes political chicken.
I don’t think it’s abdication, with respect, on either side, I think it’s taking a leaf from Rahm Emanuel, the President’s former chief of staff, who said “never let a good crisis go to waste.” This is about leverage and getting what you want while making the other side look bad, the welfare of the nation is secondary and has been since probably 1994-95, when the really sharp lines between parties were drawn on the national level. That said, the idea of making cuts painful goes back to at least the year before here in NJ, when an unpopular governor Jim Florio faced budget cuts from a Republican legislature and decided to cut the people who actually provided the services rather than management to deflect anger onto the legislature and further still back on the local level, where an executive faced with a belt-tightening legislature threatens to cut the emergency services first to scare them into backing off.
I heard rumors that these “cuts” are not really cuts, but merely reductions in the rate of growth of spending.
Those aren’t rumors, those as simple observations.
In no instance does any department or program that sees cuts spends LESS next year than they spent THIS yes. The only POSSIBLE exception is the Defense budget, which now has taken over a trillion in cuts over the next ten years.
No, this are actual cuts, at least for the current fiscal year.
The discretionary budget for 2012 was 1043 billion, then for 2013 1047 billion.
The sequester would change the 2013 budge to 974 billion — $73 billion less. Of course, then it starts increasing again, year by year, but this is an actual cut for 2013.
My understanding is that the CBO estimated that actual spending would be reduce by $44 billion for the current fiscal year — less than the cut in budget but still a decent chunk of change.
Why is it increasing in subsequent years?
Are spending increases automated?
And those reductions come pretty much entirely at the expense of the Defense Budget.
What’s more, they ignore the fact that the increase in entitlement spending is more than the “cuts”, so they mean nothing.
It’s all spin. “Oh the people think cuts are happening, even though they aren’t?…. Perfect! Conservatives are happy to think cuts are happening and lefties are agitated thinking cuts are happening! We all win!!”
In all, this is roughly a 2% cut in the budget. If the President can’t find a way to implement a 2% cut without massive disruptions in service, then maybe we should elect Sergio Marchionne as President (yes, I know we can’t because he’s Canadian).
So, who would like to purchase one of my “Let it burn” shirts?
I’m still trying to make sense of anything that comes from the national level of government anymore.
The main point to take away, that despite all the political fear-mongering from the Left, this sequester is only a drop in the bucket. This impotent ‘cut’ is nothing to get worked up about. It’s effects will be unnoticeable unless the department heads apply the cuts in as hurtful ways as possible…as has been alluded to by the chief executive. Were the department heads loyal to the Constitution (subsequently the nation) as their oaths place in higher order than loyalty to the chief executive, then these molecularly small reductions would not be noticed at all.
Although this absolutely immaterial drop in the bucket is nothing to get worked up about and certainly nothing to praise since it is such a minuscule cut (on a spending increase), the horribly broken political landscape that got us here is worthy of great concern. The sequestration principle, which was the brain child of the President, was never meant to be a productive law. No, it was pure and simple strong arming, making a law that ensured the political parties had a hostage for the future, so that no party would want to bring up fixing the spending crisis.
We have every right to be angry that the dogged determination of the chief executive to cut off his nose to spite his face just to get his way and only his way has led us to this impasse.
This divisive refusal to budge despite simple mathematics (who can argue against division and subtraction) because of essentially the same pouting attitude a toddler has when he’s told no. It has us at levels of verbal animosity not seen since the 1840-50s.
I suspect most of the Left’s fear mongering on this is mostly because they don’t want people to see that nothing in their lives is going to change with a leaner (barely) government. Why? That may lead to further healthy cuts in spending, were that to happen, the Left’s voting constituency would stop being paid off. That cannot happen.
I think this is a reasonable analysis, and I don’t comprehend why any objective and honest Obama supporter wouldn’t agree with it. As DC’s clever motormouth Chris Plante has been saying, how useful that we have now identified the 2% of the budget that pays for everything!
The President essentially said yesterday that he was determined to make the cuts hurt as much as possible. This means he is holding the country, its defense and it vulnerable in the work force hostage for political gain and to avoid compromise. How his acolytes in the media can condemn the GOP House using the debt limit this way and shrug off the same tactic when POTUS uses it without wanting ti spit on themselves boggles my mind.
And I certainly hold republicans responsible for helping us get to this point in the road. They forgot their politically genetic make up during the Bush part Deux years and became spend frenzy with the Democrats, establishing a culture that justified the other people’s money addiction.
Additionally they helped pass the sequester that put us at this poit in the road. Yes. They share some blame. But at this point in the impasse I only hear one voice that is being irrational and uncooperative.
And I blame neither party for the particular divisiveness and vitriol you hear in culture these days… Not that they haven’t been clearly caught up in the vitriol themselves.
I feel that the media, in its conscious decision to ignore objectivity and throw its entire narrative-managing weight behind one ideology, has inevitably led us to this era of spite and distrust.
They have chosen to verbally and voraciously convince one section of America to actively believe another section of America are fringers, kooks and weirdos. This has inevitably led the slighted section of America to feel the same way about the media-endorsed side of the spectrum. As the proverbial battle lines were drawn, both sides inevitably rushed to the farthest corners of the rings, reducing the political debate to a series of false dichotomies so diametrically opposed that compromise is impossible. When compromise became impossible, hatred only deepened when compromise didn’t happen.
How many false dichotomies do we hear now? Immigration debate: you either want amnesty or you hate minorities. Once you identify that you think massive amnesty is not healthy, you are immediately forced to the camp that says everyone has to be deported. If you don’t want deportations, you’re immediately forced to the side that refuses to a damn thing about making legal immigration easier while strengthening the fight against illegal immigration. The media has conveniently reinforced this irrational false dichotomy with epithets against the side they hate, ultimately forcing that side further away from rational debate. That is just one example.
When the media openly disavowed objectivity is when we saw this decline into hate and irrationality and extreme polarization. It’s sad, and if this climate (much like the hatred of the 1840s and 50s ) leads to a climate much like the 1860s, then the media is to blame for setting us down that road. Only we all know who would get blamed and would turn around and blame the other side.
All because the media doesn’t believe that the democratic process would work fine on its own… No, it needed to manage things in their direction via obfuscation, fear mongering, bewilderment and confusion.
I swear, if society collapses, journalists would be among the first to end up inn the cannibals’ stewpots.
I Donno if I’d resort to eating journalists. They are tasteless and lack substance. Most are too salty and several are too tart. Most by now are too bitter to stomach. Certainly they are too acidic.
I further submit that at this point, the only time the two sides will ever compromise is if both sides get to spend a ton of money that doesn’t exist and both sides get to creat a ton of agencies that aren’t needed.
Only that’s the problem that must be fixed. One side has acknowledged this.
Simple, Jack, I think you call it the “favorite child” way of thinking. I call it hometowning, as in when baseball fans mercilessly boo players from a team playing their home team
.