
Time to trim the fat, Congress wouldn’t do it, the White house wouldn’t help, so now Sequestration gets its turn
Well, February is almost over and it looks as if the Republicans will actually stiffen their spine instead of remove the dang thing like they did the last two times it came down to the brass tacks. That means, while the “Fiscal Cliff” was avoided and the “Debt Ceiling” was raised all to the wants and tax increases the Democrats were advocating there won’t be a last-minute reprieve for sequestration. So, by tomorrow sequestration ought to be implemented. But do you know was sequestration is? Oh I know you’ve heard the chicken littles tell you how the sky is going to fall, long lines at the airport, no first responders, we won’t be safe, blah, blah, blah, blah. They are full of #$%^ and they know it. I am here to share the truth.
The idea for sequestration came from the President himself a few years ago as part of the Budget Control Act of 2011. The President was firmly behind the idea of automatic spending cuts totaling 1.2 Trillion dollars over the next ten years if the Congress could not find and make the same spending cuts through the budget. The truth of the matter is that we’ve been borrowing 33 cents of every dollar we spend here in the United States and if we continue on that same path then by 2027 the debt we owe on that money will reach 100% of the GDP. That means we become Zimbabwe, post WWI Germany, 1980’s Mexico, etc. We Will Be Broke!
Once it goes into effect we are looking at a spending reduction of 85 Billion dollars this year. Did you get that, an 85 Billion reduction. We are not going to slash and burn the budgets, we are just not going to expand the spending as much. In fact, many of the measures taken by sequestration involve not expanding the budgets of departments from year to year, so instead of say a 3% budget increase in Defense we will have no budget increase. The sequestration is hardly the monster people are making it out to be. 85 Billion dollars is hardly anything when you consider estimated spending for 2013 is going to be 3.8 Trillion dollars. 85 Billion dollars represents 2% of that total, 2%. That would be the same as if I asked you to give me two dollars out of a hundred-dollar budget and just spend a little less. I think you could find a way to manage without all the doom and gloom, gnashing of teeth and complaints. But apparently our spend happy leaders, drunk on debt, can’t find a way to curb some of their largesse.
The Defense department is going to take half of the hit of the entire thing, so what are you worried about there. There is so much waste in the Defense department as it is, this will only help kill some long overdue dinosaurs and shore up some weak areas by getting rid of crap spending that we didn’t need to be doing in the first place. As for the other half, unfortunately Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamp programs are untouched. This is a shame seeing as how those things make up 42% of the spending in this country. Maybe some people should be a little less entitled.
We’ve been spending too much for too long with no way to pay for it. There has to be a point at which we stop and recalculate and re-budget. The sequester is going to force that to start happening. It may not solve the problem, it may even cause an economic down turn in the beginning, but we cannot continue to grow the debt unchecked. We either fix it now or go completely broke down the road. What do you think will happen when we can’t pay our debts and foreign countries refuse to buy any more of it? We lose, that’s what. The sequester ultimately then, by refusing to grow the government monster, is good for us.