The Sequester Revelation: Obama has the legal power to avoid spending-cut damage

And when the Republicans opened the seventh seal of the sequester, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black and the stars fell unto the Earth; and our nation's ability to forecast severe weather, such as drought events, hurricanes and tornados, was seriously undermined. Lo, and the children were not vaccinated, and all the beasts starved in the zoos, and the planes were grounded.

Or so President Obama and his Cabinet prophets have been preaching ahead of the automatic budget cuts due to begin Friday. The bit about the weather is a real quote from the White House budget director.

But if any of these cataclysms do come to pass, then they will be mostly Mr. Obama's own creation. The truth is that the sequester already gives the White House the legal flexibility to avoid doom, if a 5% cut to programs that have increased more than 17% on average over the Obama Presidency counts as doom.

According to Mr. Obama and his budget office, the sequester cuts are indiscriminate and spell out specific percentages that will be subtracted from federal "projects, programs and activities," or PPAs. Except for the exemptions in the 2011 budget deal, the White House says it must now cut across the board regardless of how important a given PPA is. Food inspectors, say, will be treated the same as subsidies for millionaire farmers.

Not so fast. Programs, projects and activities are a technical category of the federal budget, but the sequester actually occurs at the roughly 1,200 broader units known as budget accounts. Some accounts are small, but others contain hundreds of PPAs and the larger accounts run to billions of dollars. For the Pentagon in particular, the distinction between PPAs and accounts is huge.

Obama just exercised his legal power early this week in anticipation of the sequestration.

He released a wave of detainees from illegal immigration detention centers around the country in an effort to save money as automatic budget cuts loom.

SEE HERE:

http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2991395/posts

I’ve never seen a more LAWLESS president in my lifetime.

Here are just some suggestions for Obama ( assuming he were a responsible man <-— I know, I can dream can’t I?)

* Homeland Security could begin by targeting some of the programs identified by Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn this week.

* Cut grants for a security conference in San Diego that featured “zombie apocalypse training”

* Cut funds for towns like Keene, New Hampshire (pop. 23,000) to purchase armored tank-like vehicles called Bearcats.

* Before furloughing park rangers, maybe start with the 10% of the 75,000 Department of the Interior employees who are conserving the wilderness of Washington, D.C.

* Before slashing cancer research, stop funding the $130-million-a-year National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine that studies herbs and yoga (Why can’t these researches be done with private funds?)

* Cut after-school funding only after consolidating the 105 federal programs meant to encourage kids to take math and science classes.

RE: The end of this article points some realistic choices that make more sense than simply posturing for political gain.

I just posted a few of them above.

ALSO SEE HERE:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2013/feb/25/furloughs-are-looming-feds-are-still-hiring/

EXCERPT:

Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican and Congress’s top waste-watcher, sent a letter Monday to the White House budget office asking it to halt new hiring in low-priority jobs as a way of trying to preserve more important positions such as food safety inspectors and Border Patrol agents.

His letter identified 10 help-wanted jobs posted on the federal hiring website, USAJobs.gov, which he said could save as much as $1.4 million a year if the government canceled the hiring.

Among them were the staff assistant job at the Labor Department, which paid up to $81,204 a year for someone to do scheduling and screening calls; a new lawyer for the Morris K. Udall Scholarship program, with a salary of up to $155,000 a year; and a new director for the Air Force’s history and museums program, with a salary topping out at $165,300 a year.

There is also an ad for 10 “motor vehicle operator” jobs at the State Department, ranging in pay from $22.76 to $26.45 an hour for duties described as: “Drive and operate vans, trucks, and passenger vehicles on shuttle runs, special, long distance, and overnight trips; Perform maintenance and minor repairs on vehicles that includes but is not limited to changing flat tires and checking vehicle oil; and Assist passengers and loads and/or unload luggage.”

“Are any of these positions more important than an air traffic controller, a border patrol officer, a food inspector, a TSA screener, or a civilian supporting our men and women in combat in Afghanistan?” Mr. Coburn asked in his letter to White House budget office acting Director Jeffrey Zients.

The budget office did not immediately return a request for comment.

Here’s one whopper that Obama and his henchmen keep pushing:

You Can’t Cut Nonexistent Programs!

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget says the sequester will cut a whopping $2 million from the $20 million budget for the National Drug Intelligence Center. That sounds pretty bad – until you realize the Drug Intelligence Center closed its door in June 2012.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.