The Sequester and Political Cowardice

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The Sequester reality check:

President Obama, February 28th, 2013:

“Starting tomorrow everybody here, all the folks who are cleaning the floors at the Capitol. Now that Congress has left, somebody’s going to be vacuuming and cleaning those floors and throwing out the garbage. They’re going to have less pay. The janitors, the security guards, they just got a pay cut, and they’ve got to figure out how to manage that. That’s real.”

…Later that day:

Carlos Elias, the Capitol Building superintendent, sent out a memo reminding staffers that the current sequestration plan does not include “reductions in force or furloughs” and that “pay and benefit of each of our employees will not be impacted.”

Last week while discussing the potentially apocalyptic nature of the ‘cuts’ a cabinet secretary said this:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan told CBS “there are literally teachers now who are getting pink slips, who are getting notices that they can’t come back this fall."

…And then a few days later:

Duncan appeared to backpedal Wednesday, coming up with just one example, a West Virginia county, and the disclaimer that “whether it’s all sequester-related, I don’t know.”

It has now been two days since the sequester was signed by the President. There has been no quantifying negative effect as had been prognosticated by the legislative class.  In what was a political gambit soundly lost, the attempts by the current administration to garner support against House Republicans and force tax increases failed for several reasons, but the most significant was this:

The facts were against them and the American people instinctively knew it.

The President, his administration and their media sycophants wasted a truly singular opportunity to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity by simply being honest with the citizenry.

To wit:

Consider this missed true leadership scenario:

The President could have made a nationally televised speech and informed the people that given our sixteen trillion ($16,000,000,000,000) and growing national debt, our one trillion ($1,000,000,000,000) annual budget deficit – projected to be such each year for the foreseeable future – it would be untenable to continue this budgetary madness. He had thus directed his administration to undertake a literal line by line evaluation of the national budget - which for four years he has opted not to present – and to reconsider the nation’s priorities. He will be publishing his budget online within the next 24 hours so that each and every citizen can examine his choices.

It would have been historic; it would have put this nation on firm fiscal footing for a generation and spurred economic growth not seen for fifty years.

Regardless of his choices, it would have passed by an almost unanimous congressional vote, given that the American people would have voiced support to their representatives. The American electorate is smarter than the government understands. Securing a firm financial foundation is greater than short term political, cowardly choices.

Sadly, neither party opted for this choice of action.

Instead, it was preferable to take the ridiculous route of making claims of starving children, refusing medical care to our seasoned citizens and laying down our arms so that our enemies could defeat our shell of a once dominant military.

Truly absurd, but more importantly it is demonstrating a true lack of leadership.

The President of the United States is the most powerful political figure on the planet.

He was unable to rationally cut 44 billion ($44,000,000,000) dollars from a 1.4 trillion (1,400,000,000,000) dollar budget, or about 2 percent.

Such ineptitude by all members of our government does not bode well for freedom, and the American people deserve better.