Sequestration scares are the ultimate Washington Wink-Winks
Mark Tapscott
The Washington Examiner
2/23/2013
Washington’s professional politicians are doing their level best to use the prospect of fearsome sequestration budget cuts to scare the rest of us into endless refrains of “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”
The sequestration scares are the ultimate example of the Washington Wink-Wink : Politicos from both parties warn of imminent disaster if the federal budget is “cut” even though they know government spending will be higher in 2013 regardless if the sequestration “cuts” are implemented.
Put another way, the sequestration scares are lies, pure and simple. Not just bunk, not just distortions or mis-statements, but lies. And every professional politician – Democrat, Republican, Socialist, Independent – in this town knows it.
Take, for example, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s claim that sequestration cuts will force his department to close down the nation’s commercial airports.
Why? Because, LaHood told a congressional committee last week, “the vast majority of FAA’s [Federal Aviation Administration] nearly 47,000 employees will be furloughed for approximately one day per pay period until the end of the fiscal year, and in some cases it could be as many as two days.”
Understand that LaHood is the former Illinois Republican congressman President Obama put in his cabinet to give his administration a patina of bipartisanship. Both men are products of what is arguably the most corrupt state political system in America.
They wear different party labels, but LaHood and Obama are cut from the same corrupt cloth and thus epitomize the professional politicians who thrive on Washington Wink-Winks.
Here’s the truth that exposes LaHood’s Wink-Wink: The FAA’s workforce compensation costs are about $600 million annually, yet that agency spends at least $500 million annually just on consultants.
LaHood knows this and he knows that legions of such consultants in every federal department and agency get consulting contracts after they retire from the civil service, they are politically connected with the party in power in the White House, or they contributed to a congressman who favored them with an earmark.
So when somebody says federal spending is out of control and should be reduced, professional politicians like LaHood invariably threaten to close down essential services like airports, rather than first rooting out the waste and fraud on “consultants.”
But the lie of sequestration goes even beyond predictable prevarications like LaHood’s…
The article continues at The Washington Examiner
…If media members had been honest about this the past few months, there’s no way the administration would have been able to make the case that the world is going to come to an end as a result of these cuts…
Also, by Bob Woodward, Obama’s sequester deal-changer
…My extensive reporting for my book “The Price of Politics” shows that the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors — probably the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government… [emphasis CAJ]
Read the whole thing!
Update: via Common Sense Club
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CAJ note: Readers know, but we will remind you, your local services like police, fire, teachers, meat inspectors, etc., are paid by your local governments, not by the federal government. Senator Rand Paul has been carrying this message to the media for weeks.
Update 2: White House Releases New State-by-State Reports on the Impacts of the Sequester
Today, the White House released state-by-state reports on the impact it says the sequester will have on jobs and middle class families across the country if Congress fails to compromise to avert the sequester by March 1st…
H/T ReFounders
