GOP Must Not Cave to the Bully on His Sequestration

Townhall.com ^ | February 22, 2013 | David Limbaugh

[Kaslin]

President Obama's demagoguery and fear-mongering on his sequester cuts are breathtaking, even for him. Lest you think I am engaging in hyperbole, let me give you the dictionary definition of a demagogue.

One definition is "a political leader who seeks support by appealing to popular desires and prejudices rather than by using rational argument."

Obama's ordinary MO is to stir people against one another, to stoke the flames of envy among some against others in lieu of rational argument to rally support for his causes.

Obama has had four years to try his ideas. They have all failed, in every category. His stimulus plan to spend nearly $1 trillion of borrowed money to jump-start the economy was a colossal, unconscionable waste of money we didn't have and not only didn't work as promised but probably stalled the private sector's efforts to recover. He remains defiantly unrepentant in the face of his repeated reckless green policy failures.

Liberal economists and ideologues -- in some cases, there's little difference -- cling fast to the myth that Obama's gutting of the private sector to chase public money after projects for which there was no demand actually helped the economy. But they can't prove their assertion that the economy would have been worse but for the stimulus any more than one can prove a negative. But objective evidence says otherwise: Obama has presided over the worst recovery in 50 years.

But those who control the writing of history (and the other disciplines, such as economics, that have been thoroughly politicized in modern academia) have an advantage in controlling the present. Liberal academic revisionists have firmly planted in our history and economic texts the myth that FDR's big-government policies brought us out of the Great Depression. Only recently have a number of modern historians and authors set the record straight: His policies exacerbated and prolonged the Depression. Yet Obama persists in touting his own big-government prescriptions, demanding we ignore history and his own record.

Obama has had four years to get the economy moving, and our extraordinarily high level of unemployment is just as high as it was when he took office and, when you consider the record numbers of people leaving the workforce, is much worse than the numbers indicate. Yet he still refuses to accept any responsibility for his own failures.

Obama will not offer any plan to reduce spending, especially entitlements. He just keeps going back to his crusade against the rich, from whom he's already extracted a higher tax rate and eliminated personal exemptions and deductions. He promised he wanted a balanced approach, but he refuses to balance his punitive tax hikes with spending cuts and entitlement reform. Even former Sen. Alan Simpson said that unless Obama gets serious about entitlements, he will have a failed presidency.

But Obama and his Democratic senators will not pass a budget, and they will not participate in entitlement reform. Instead, Obama is back railing against the Republicans for their alleged unwillingness to further tax the rich, whom they have already reluctantly agreed to discriminatorily tax.

Obama tells us that Republicans are insisting on keeping his brainchild -- the sequestration -- in place to avoid further taxing the rich. This is the same sequestration he promised to support; he even threatened to veto efforts to remove it. Now he complains about its draconian cuts -- not about cuts to the military but about cuts to his sacred domestic programs. But in fact, even with the sequester cuts, we will be spending more in fiscal year 2013 than we have in any other fiscal year in American history, save 2011. He is simply misleading the public because he wants to further punish the rich -- even if it means holding hostage our military and accelerating the nation's imminent bankruptcy.

Obama is dreadfully wrong on both sides of the fiscal equation. Economic growth does not depend on government spending, which has the opposite effect because it sucks the wind out of the private sector; and you balance the budget not by taxing the rich but by drastically cutting spending and reforming entitlements.

Obama and his ilk mock Republicans for their "trickledown" economics, but Obama is the quintessential proponent of his own trickledown economics. As to the private sector and entrepreneurship, he is an atheist. He believes that only he and his central planners in the omniscient federal government can cause economic growth and that from that high mountain of government largesse will trickle down economic activity for the ignorant, impotent private sector and the economy at large.

The sequestration, as House Speaker John Boehner has said, is an ugly way to cut spending and is not good for our national defense. But if we don't start cutting fast (and the sequester is more a reduction in the rate of spending increases than it is a cut), we won't have the money to support a military at all, much less anything else. Time to stop playing games with the nation's very viability and our children's future. The Republicans must hold to their guns this time.

[Mr. K]

They just need to repeat over and over
1) this was HIS IDEA in the first place, in order to cut the deficit...
and
2) it is only 2%.

If we can’t cut a lousy 2% when we are swimming in debt, we are screwed.

[gov_bean_ counter]

#3. The decision to furlough Federal employees and shut down critical national infrastructure is his choice and reflects his priorities...

[SkyPilot]

Pentagon awash in pink slips, preparing 800,000 civilian furloughs

David and Rush have nothing to worry about.

Freepers like ducttape do.

"You people on here that support this anger me to no end. There are many good people, like myself, who will be hurt, and hurt badly, because of this. Sure, there are folks who make enough money to be able to tighten up a bit, but when folks like me, WHO BARELY NET $22,000 A YEAR, have to take a pay cut because of Obama's war on the military see you cheering this, it makes me wonder why I even patronize this website. I'm going to lose over $4,000, and you're happy? Go ahead, flame away, but I'm letting you know that this sequestration will hurt many people and all I see you doing is cheering Obama on. Sickening, absolutely sickening................ "

[butterdezillion]

I hate it that the bulk of it is taken from the military though.

It may not be much to cut out a pound of flesh from a 50-pound child, but when it’s insisted that the pound has to come from the child’s brain it almost makes you think the intent is to kill the child...

[Kaslin]

Well, he doesn’t want to cut anything, just the opposite

[jeffc]

Proof that you can do anything you want when the media is cheer-leading (and covering) for you.

[Happy Rain]

I shouldn’t worry—the TEA Party is warning the RINOs as we speak...

...of course we are giving them (like our Lindsey Graham) a false sense of security if they do as we ask but we are still gonna primary their liberal butts to the curb next year...

...come 2014, for instance, the two US Senators from SC will be Nikki Haley and Tim Scott...

...booyah!

[SkyPilot]

Yup.

When you "exempt" 2/3rds of mandatory entitlement spending, and then place 50% of the cuts on the military, something is wrong with this picture.

The Republicans should have demanded that the $600 Billion in January tax increases have been tied to ending the Sequester.

Instead, they argued just the opposite. Hey, how's that 60 day reprieve working out for you guys?

Our military leaders and heroes told the House and Senate Armed Services Committees that these cuts were devastating?

Oh well.....what the heck, right?

[cripplecreek]

You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down.

CS Lewis.

[BitWielder1]

It's blackmail. Oh, is that racist? Extortion then.
"If you don't give in to raising taxes I will cut something dear to your voters and tell them it's YOUR FAULT!"

[Kaslin]

It’s criminal and criminals usually get punished for this

[pythonjavaawk]

If a set of Congressional Republicans could actually make successful cuts to the Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid budgets, I would throw my support behind them even if I thought they were wrong on literally every single other domestic, fiscal, social and foreign policy issue in existence. Possibly because I am a part of a generation that is gonna get royally screwed over by unchecked Medicare and SS.

[AZLiberty]

Obama and the GOP “leadership” are engaging in mutual sequesterbation.

[Pentagon Leatherneck]

Indeed they do. Old farts like me can absorb a 20 percent cut, even though our miserable economy is no more my fault than an earthquake is. It won’t even affect my personal morale much, but it sure will increase my workload on the four days a week I’m allowed to work, since nobody decreased my duties. The irony is that the Colonels and contractors I work with every day will be unaffected.

Sad that our government leaders don’t care about fixing the real problems eroding our economy.

TC

[Ouderkirk]

At some point one has to draw a line in the sand.

Will some get hurt for real....probably. As bad as they suggest, I doubt it.

We are past the point for action and Ducktape needs to find a new gig.

[SkyPilot]

Well, that's easy for you to say.

I have been trying my best to not think that I am the supreme being over other people's situations lately. Perhaps that comes from God rebuking me, I don't know.

But it is downright ludicrous and shameful that a guy here on FR that NETs 22K, works for it!, earns it!, should be taken to task by the finger pointers that seem to dominate this board lately.

This burns me Ouderkirk. We have a 47 million Americans who get a plastic ATM card in their mail box these days. I am not exaggerating this - it is fact. The great majority of these people have done NOTHING for this country. They cheat, and they vote.

For that they are rewarded.

We have a guy here on FR who works for little to contribute to the Department of Defense, and the locusts around here cannot line up fast enough to vilify him.

If that is what we have become, you all can have it.

[FrankR]

[Ouderkirk]

I am not suggesting that you FRiend doesn’t work for it.

As for those who have the EBT cards...they should not. Not one dime for them. Let them get their rations from government stores with generic versions of most processed foodstuffs and meat and vegetables.

At some point people who are working for the governement are going to have to face the music that the executive branch values the EBT cardholder over the worker. You and Ducttape are going to have to face that fact and plan accordingly.

I am not suggesting the Ducttape’s work doesn’t have value, but that value is not valued more by the executive and his minions.

Sucks to be you, but welcome to the world. While I have managed to maintain my private sector job for the duration of this mess, that is not a certainty going into the future and have been seeking other opportunities, which are out there, but at significantly less than I am earning presently.

Nothing is forever and some who don’t deserve to, will pay the price for this administration’s foolishness.