Obama has the authority to ensure sequester cuts don’t bite
Facts 1, Democratic Scare Stories of All the Carnage to Result From Cutting $85 Billion Out of a $4 Trillion in Spending 0. From the Wall Street Journal:
[I]f any of these cataclysms [mentioned by President Obama and congressional Democrats] 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. This means in most cases the President has the room to protect his “investments” while managing the fiscal transition over time.
The explanation for this unrealized distinction, the Journal continues, is that the bill hastily passed in 2011 took its language from the 1985 Gramm-Rudman Deficit Control Act. When the federal government is operating under continuing budget resolutions rather than a normal budget, as it has been for a few years now, the 1985 bill (and thus the 2011 bill) provides that cuts can be made at the broader level. Finally, Senate Democrats’ dereliction of duty, in refusing to pass a budget, comes with a benefit.
With the claim that he has no discretion in making budget cuts now disproved, Obama’s case rests on the highly dubious proposition that any cuts of $85 billion out of nearly $4 trillion in spending would be disastrous. No reasonable person can possibly believe the federal government spends every last billion efficiently; it’s why majorities of the public continue to tell pollsters they think spending cuts should be the priority in reducing the deficit, even if they disagree about which particular spending programs should be affected.
Of course, it’s also a dubious proposition that sequestration would lead to unbearable outcomes even absent this flexibility. If the president truly believes that the last $85 billion of federal spending is the difference between order and chaos, then he can’t possibly be believed when he says he’s in favor of cutting any spending at all.
That’s all the more true if the Obama administration really has the flexibility to make cuts in the most prudent fashion possible — and the entire Journal editorial is worth reading to get a full grasp of why that’s true. Any slowing of services from airport security to weather forecasting, or the loss of jobs for teachers and police officers, will be because the cuts weren’t managed properly.
Or, as the Journal puts it: “The real revelation is that if the world does end, it will be Mr. Obama’s choice.”
– By Kyle Wingfield
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222 comments Add your comment
Politico
February 27th, 2013
8:35 pm
“And, sadly, his base is eating it up, as witnessed by the idiotic comments from the Libs posted here on a daily basis. “We won, nyah, nyah, nyah, nhay.” – ”
Let’s just overlook the number of conservatives who were spiking the ball before the Obamacare ruling and talking about President Romney for months before the election.
The selective and feigned outrage is oozing from your pores.
No side has a corner on the boasting and bragging market. Granted one side has boasted a little before the game was over, but bragging and boasting for sure.
Oh well, do carry on.
Bruno
February 27th, 2013
8:40 pm
Some rare Floyd, “Country Song”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqvTIZGRxDg
Politico
February 27th, 2013
8:41 pm
Maybe you were not one of the ones doing either of those, maybe you were, put you get the point.
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
February 27th, 2013
8:41 pm
obozo the belligerent jets around the country in his gilded carriage brutalizing the economy with his high hysteria and lying freakshow and the libs have the nerve to say the Republicans are acting out of sorts?
Politico
February 27th, 2013
8:45 pm
Aesop
For all of Obama’s crap, Republicans can walk away and be done with it. Obama can’t stop what he signed into law.
Bruno
February 27th, 2013
8:45 pm
Politico–I can only hope that you graduate from middle school one of these days. Seriously.
In the meantime, your party had a full majority in government for 2 years, and has had a partial majority for another 2+ years, and what do we have to show for it other than skyrocketing deficits and debt?? But I won’t hold my breath waiting for any of you Libs to take responsibility for anything.
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
February 27th, 2013
8:45 pm
obozo is a fascist in the truest sense of the word; if you don’t comply with his diktats he will use his office and government power to maim you.
What a wonderful country we’ve become.
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
February 27th, 2013
8:48 pm
p-lo : I’m pretty sure that’s the plan.
Either that or this will be boehner’s last decision.
Politico
February 27th, 2013
8:50 pm
“I can only hope that you graduate from middle school one of these days. Seriously. – ”
This from the guy who cries about others insulting, calling names and ball spiking, yet he calls names insults and is a notorious ball spiker
Time for you to look in the mirror and take a little of the medicine you are so quick to prescribe to others. “Seriously”
Politico
February 27th, 2013
8:53 pm
Aesop
That might be the best plan. They both signed off on it. Now let’s do it.
Bruno
February 27th, 2013
8:54 pm
Personally, I’m not sure if going the sequestration route is the most intelligent way to address our budget problems, but any cut in spending is a step in the right direction IMO.
I still can’t figure out why entitlement spending is so sacred in the eyes of the Left, while military spending is protected by the Right. Nothing is sacred right now. Our rate of debt accumulation is way too great to leave anything off the table.
Bruno
February 27th, 2013
8:57 pm
Politico–You spend more than half your time here trying to conjure up previous blog incidents about which your recollection doesn’t seem to be very accurate. Is your life really that empty?? Are you just as unlikable away from the blog??
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
February 27th, 2013
9:02 pm
There are many options available to the Repugs to steer the cuts away from obozo’s preferred method of flooding the streets of America with criminals.
Politico
February 27th, 2013
9:04 pm
Bruno
Look in the mirror dude. When you stop being the hypocrite you are in terms of being a name caller and ball spiker you might have a point about someone else. Since you continue to cry about those things while you are doing the same, that is your problem not mine or any other blogger.
You think you are above your on retribution; think again. Maybe you are in your own mind and that is fine, but if you are going to talk the talk…….. try walking it for a change.
Are you this big of a hypocrite away from the blog?
Bruno
February 27th, 2013
9:06 pm
I got to see “The Wall” in LA in 1979, though it never became one of my favorite Floyd albums.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0HrrR9QDQU
getalife
February 27th, 2013
9:42 pm
“Cantor Warns of ‘Civil War’ In Republican Party…” drudgey.
They are even out of touch with their own party.
Was he over in Europe on the taxpayers dime?
Dusty
February 27th, 2013
9:46 pm
Dear MarkV
Once again you have returned to your circular thinking on President Obama. If you find any fault with him or his administration, I must have missed it.
Most people realize that this country has even more problems since he became president. Things are worse. but I won’t even mention what comes out daily in the news because you will make an excuse for it or deny that it is a problem.
Sorry but I don’t even remember discussing who delivers your mail. I really don’t care. As to what defines freedom, I shall continue to decide for myself on that subject. So no need for you to decide for me. Thank you but I shall continue to present my own opinion. That’s part of my freedom.
Getting late. G’nite. . .
Bruno
February 27th, 2013
10:15 pm
Are you this big of a hypocrite away from the blog?
Away from the blog, I’m King of the World.
Bruno
February 27th, 2013
10:24 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A5Tbh_cCSU
td
February 27th, 2013
10:46 pm
Bob Woodward called a senior White House official last week to tell him that in a piece in that weekend’s Washington Post, he was going to question President Barack Obama’s account of how sequestration came about – and got a major-league brushback. The Obama aide “yelled at me for about a half hour,” Woodward told us in an hour-long interview yesterday around the Georgetown dining room table where so many generations of Washington’s powerful have spilled their secrets.
Digging into one of his famous folders, Woodward said the tirade was followed by a page-long email from the aide, one of the four or five administration officials most closely involved in the fiscal negotiations with the Hill. “I apologize for raising my voice in our conversation today,” the official typed. “You’re focusing on a few specific trees that give a very wrong impression of the forest. But perhaps we will just not see eye to eye here. … I think you will regret staking out that claim.”
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Woodward repeated the last sentence, making clear he saw it as a veiled threat. “ ‘You’ll regret.’ Come on,” he said. “I think if Obama himself saw the way they’re dealing with some of this, he would say, ‘Whoa, we don’t tell any reporter ‘you’re going to regret challenging us.’ ”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/02/woodward-at-war-88212.html#ixzz2MA5hYRwh
So Woodword feels threatened by aides. I wonder what this administration has done to conservative journalist.
md
February 27th, 2013
10:53 pm
Obama would have nothing to do if he couldn’t put on a show for the masses. I’ve been on the planet for awhile and never seen anything quite like it. It’s perpetual theater, and the scary part is the masses can’t see through it.
Chavez played the same part on his way to being an elected dictator…..makes one wonder what was in that little book passed from one to the other. Could it have been…………….nah.
Lil' Barry Bailout - OBAMAPHONE!!!
February 28th, 2013
12:17 am
@jamiedupree: Congressional Budget Office says Senate Democratic sequester plan increases federal budget deficit $7.2 billion
———-
Uh, isn’t a sequester supposed to LOWER the deficit?
You really do have to be mentally retarded to be a Democrat.