Sequester or Soliloquy?

This article,  “The Administration’s Thin Complaints About the Sequester” by Megan McArdle, deals with the sequester. What was happening with this sequestration was that the White House was predicting it to be much more terrible than it truly is. It reminds me of two children’s fairy tales: “The Boy Who Cried ‘Wolf’” and “Chicken Little.” “A big ferocious wolf is about to attack the sheep!” and “The sky is falling!” seem to be the messages they want us to hear so they can spend however much money they want. Everyone panics and rushes to save themselves from the threat.

  

In this video, “Obama Warning About Sequestration,” Obama states that, “Thousands of teachers and educators will be laid off. Tens of thousands of parents will have to scramble to find childcare for their kids. Air traffic controllers and airport security will see cutbacks causing delays across the country. These cuts will cut back medical science for a generation. The threat of these cuts has forced the navy to delay the deployment of an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf affecting our ability to respond to threats in an unstable part of the world. If these cuts go through, almost eight hundred thousand defense employees…will be forced to take an unpaid leave.” 

 “The president’s aides had to scramble to come up with reasons why the president could be correct, without actually knowing the facts.” “This is not the first time that the administration has been caught making grossly exaggerated claims about the impact of the sequester.” “These were not [teacher] layoffs, but rather “transfer notices” sent to 104 Title I teachers for reasons unrelated to the sequestration cuts.” “The administration is having a hard time finding concrete examples of bad things that the sequester is going to do.”

In this video, “Obama Myths of Sequestration Panic Debunked,”

Obama states in November of 2011 that he wanted sequester (automatic spending cuts that would reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion) to go through. He spins 180° by February of this year and describes the sequester as “brutal spending cuts.” The President is crying wolf.

Michael D. Tanner, Cato Institute Senior Fellow, makes these comments about Obama’s warnings. “Cuts aren’t even across all areas of spending, so domestic discretionary spending takes a hit of about 9%, returning us to the spending of 2009. This is mainly in defense spending, but it is projected that in 6 years we’ll be right back where we are today. The pentagon will still spend far more in inflation-adjusted dollars than at the height of the cold war.

There will be pain for those directly effected by these cuts and communities that depend on these federal paychecks, but these cuts amount to 3/100 % of our Gross Domestic Product. If we can’t cut federal spending by that amount without tanking the entire economy, then we are as bad off as Greece.”

Therefore, I don’t believe the sky is falling, though there may be some wolves in sheep’s clothing in Washington.