PRESIDENT OBAMA: You smell that? Do you smell that?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: What?
OBAMA: Sequestration, son. Nothing else in the media smells like that.
I love the smell of sequestration in the media. You know, one time we had Capitol Hill reported on for twelve hours...and when it was all over, I walked up. They didn't find one of them, not one stinking government program that wasn't gutted. The smell, you know that media smell? The whole federal government-smelled like-sequestration.
Someday this manufactured crisis's gonna end.
One can hope this is the end.
Apocalypse Not, indeed (tip to Instapundit).
Or in graph form:
I stand corrected, I guess. I've been noting a 2.3% figure. I recant! At 2.4%, Apocalypse descends!
Some will protest that the cuts are actually much bigger in the portions of the budget that the sequester applies to. They are correct. But they are not correct enough.
Remember, too, that statutes are not carved in stone. Congress can choose how to allocate that reduction in the spending increase without increasing taxes as long as the president doesn't veto it. Choosing to take the cuts in defense and certain non-defense programs is a choice the president and his Democratic allies have made in an effort to maximize the pain of the slowing of the spending increase.
Oh, and other critics of the sequester say it is too radical and that cuts should be gradually phased in. Huh? Check out that red sliver on the graph. Note how that the sequester is phased in over a decade? How much longer should the reductions in the planned increase be delayed? Until every politician involved has retired?
Honest to God, I am just stunned at this charade. I have low standards for our government. But this whole episode has crashed through the floor of my minimal standards for honesty and decency in our governing class. We should be embarrassed at the dog and pony show these clowns are putting on. They dare call it "leading" us.
