slideshow

By the time you read this we will have gone through a few days of sequestration which is a big word for mandated budget cuts. With the deficit, spending more money than revenues which are primarily taxes; debt of almost $17 trillion which is an accumulation of annual deficits and unfunded liabilities of over $100 trillion primarily for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security it is obvious to most informed people that we have a serious spending problem.

The $85 billion of mandated cuts amounts to less than 2.5 percent of the federal budget. Is there anyone out there who can make a case for these cuts not being needed? Anyone who honestly feels Congress and the president can’t quickly accomplish these cuts without affecting vital services?

Sequestration if allowed to go for the stated 10 years, will reduce the GROWTH of the federal government by $1.2 trillion but, despite that at the end of 10 years the federal government will still be over $2 trillion per year LARGER than it is today!

Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is a classic bureaucrat in such situations. Two days before sequestration went into effect she ordered the release from prison of several hundred illegal immigrants. Further she predicted long waits at airport lines since she’d “have to” reduce staffing of the TSA agents. This is classic Washington strategy to make cuts effect us so we’ll cry out in protest versus cutting the fat.

Secretary of State John Kerry, another Obama appointee, just last weekend committed $460 million to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt which brings this years total going to Egypt of $1.6billion!

What Obama, Napolitano, Kerry, etc., do not get or have some grand rationalization for is that we are broke, there are hundreds of billions of dollars spent on redundant programs (GAO estimates $300billion per year), hundreds of programs that are unnecessary and/or don’t work and federal employees as reported by USA Today about a year ago being paid (compensation and benefits) 42 percent more than their counterparts in the private sector. If this last point is anywhere near correct it is an outrage and the first place to reduce costs! Ah, but guess what many of these federal employees are union members and Obama is beholden to unions. Therefore the most obvious place to look for savings is off the table. Do you begin to understand why the debt, deficits and under-funding just keeps getting worse?

Ladies and gentlemen millions of us who don’t work for the federal government, or for a contractor who does work for the federal government or get benefits from the federal government for which we paid nothing have suffered through a lousy economy over the past five years, lost jobs, taken pay cuts and wondered how we were going to provide for our families. Meanwhile those just listed have made little if any sacrifice except for those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Is that fair?

Is it fair that we have had to close Cannon Street, Westside and soon Unity schools, but the federal government still spends our taxes and obligates future generations for pretty much what it wants on programs FAR less deserving than the education of our children?

If you listened to the State of the Union address several weeks ago, you’d think we were in boom times as the President listed about 17 new programs costing hundreds of billions of dollars but said basically nothing about our growing fiscal crisis. One of his 17 new programs was pre-kindergarten for all and he cited Georgia as the example of a successful pre-kindergarten program. What he fails to say, is we implemented this statewide program years ago with ZERO federal dollars!

President Obama denies he came up with the idea of sequestration but he did and he boldly said several months ago it would never take effect but it has. Instead of leading a bi-partisan effort to correct our growing fiscal problems he has gone around the country with scare tactics and blames the Republicans. This President is one of the best campaigners we’ve ever seen but he doesn’t govern. Many of us strongly suspect a key goal of Obama is to do whatever he can to take control of the House in 2014 so he has no motivation to work with Republicans now. Politics in Washington is nasty and no one is nastier at this than President Obama!

When upwards of 80 percent of those polled last November said they believed President Obama “cares about people like me,” you begin to see how good Obama is at distortion. What most want is a good job but how is the above really helping them/you get one? I contend, as we have seen since President Obama was elected, his policies are hurting our economy. If you agree “shout it from the rooftops!”

Rep Jeff Brown (Ret)