Obama Has Overplayed His Hand

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

This ‘Dreaded Sequester’ will apparently only cut $42B out of this year’s fiscal budget. Not $85B as previously reported and feared.

That is according to CBO. That is also less than 1 penny out of every dollar the federal government spends this year. Even Joe Scarborough says so although Mika would disagree with him, of course.

Have you had to cut back a little more than 1 penny per dollar in your spending these past 4 years? Betcha have.

1 penny. Less than 1% of the budget this year.

President Obama has way overplayed his hand in this one and tried to scare you to death about Republicans wanting to starve children and throw old people out into the streets. It is a sad day when our President continues to campaign even though he has won re-election and can never run for President again.

You’d think he would quit playing political games and get down to the serious business of governing this nation and helping get us out of this mess in which we are now mired. Is he really going to leave office on January 20, 2017, hopefully voluntarily, and look back on 2 terms of campaigning and not governing?

We have been pretty tough on what we thought was a terrible record on spending restraint by President George W. Bush 43 and the House and Senate GOP majorities from 2001-2007. ‘Horrible’. ‘Spineless’. ‘Irresponsible.’ And those are just some of the ‘nice’ words we could publish.

But the lack of courage and leadership on spending reduction by President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has taken that disgust to the next level. We thought 43 and the GOP Congress were ‘major league’ in their negligence to protect the national fisc.

They were just pikers compared to Barack Obama and Harry Reid and friends. Bush and the GOP Congress were like the Bad News Bears compared to this team.

Read the damaging (to Obama) CBO report for yourself and see why his histrionics and lambasting of the Republicans are just so false:

‘Why Does CBO Expect the Sequestration to Reduce Outlays by Just $42 Billion in Fiscal Year 2013 Even Though the Automatic Budget Cuts Total $85 Billion This Year?

The $85 billion represents the reduction in budgetary resources available to government agencies this year as a result of the sequestration. But not all of that money would have been spent in this fiscal year in the absence of the sequestration: Some would have been used to enter into contracts to buy goods or services to be provided and paid for next year or in subsequent years.

Acquiring major weapons systems and completing large construction projects, for example, can take several years. The $42 billion figure is CBO’s estimate of the reduction in cash disbursements in fiscal year 2013; much of the remaining outlay reductions from the 2013 sequestration will occur in fiscal year 2014, though some will occur later.’

How Big Are the Automatic Spending Reductions in 2013 and 2014? The economic effects of changes in federal spending in this calendar year reflect the budgetary effects of the automatic spending reductions in fiscal year 2013 (which ends in the third quarter of calendar year 2013) and in the beginning of fiscal year 2014 (which includes the fourth quarter of calendar year 2013).

As reported in Table 1-7 of The Budget and Economic Outlook, CBO projects that sequestration will reduce the deficit by $42 billion in fiscal year 2013 and that this year’s sequestration and automatic spending reductions next year will reduce the deficit by $89 billion in fiscal year 2014.

CBO did not attempt to project the precise timing or detailed composition of this year’s spending reductions. Instead, our estimates are based on historical observations of the timing of the broad types of spending that will be affected.’

Editor’s Note: Frank Hill is the Director of the Institute for the Public Trust in Charlotte, NC. He is former chief of staff to Congressman Alex McMillan of NC and also served on the staffs of former U.S. Senator Elizabeth Dole and the House Budget Committee.