Sequestration Didn’t Cause The Sky To Fall

It is shocking that any of us woke up this morning. To listen to Obama and the Democrats for the last few weeks you would think that once Sequestration takes effect the world would come to an end. Yet here we are, hanging out online reading articles and going about our regular daily affairs. Imagine that, cutting $85 billion from the Federal budget hasn’t caused the entire Earth to explode. The more days we go along as normal with this dreadful “austerity” the more everyone will realize Obama has been crying wolf all along. Those of us on the right already knew that, those who only marginally pay attention will discover it soon.

Obama had a press conference yesterday that pretty much sums up his administration. At one point he got snippy with a reporter asking “what do you want me to do?” This has been the problem all along, Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He has no idea how to negotiate with Republicans. In fact, he didn’t know how to negotiate with Democrats when they had super majorities during the first two years of his Presidency. Obama knows how to dictate, he doesn’t know how to govern in a Constitutional government. Obama knows how to rabble rouse in speeches but he doesn’t know how to negotiate a deal. For all of his campaigning against the sequester, he never offered an alternative plan.

Almost as interesting in that press conference is a question posed to Obama about not letting Boehner and McConnell leave during negotiations. Obama points out, much to his chagrin no doubt, that he isn’t a dictator and thus can’t force Boehner to negotiate. It’s interesting that the press seems to think the President has some sort of royal power to force Congress to negotiate with him. Can you think of a more ridiculous question coming out of the press in recent years? Ok, you can. But posed to the President? What sort of clown asks that kind of question?

Having said that, the President hasn’t tried to negotiate with the Republicans on sequester at all. Before that idiotic question was asked, the President had only given the GOP seven minutes of his time. Yesterday Republicans met with Obama for 52 minutes. It’s hardly surprising that a last minute deal couldn’t be reached. Boehner is admittedly under pressure from his caucus not to cave to the President again. Obama has spent the last month campaigning for an elimination of sequester. What Obama never did was demand negotiations. He spent his campaign time whining about the dreaded consequences of sequestration, he called for a change. He never offered a plan and never demanded negotiations. Is anyone then surprised that he met with Republicans for less than an hour this week?

The Federal government badly needs to cut this money from its budget. In fact, we need to go much further in cutting government. We have a President who doesn’t want to go through each Federal agency program by program determining what programs need to be cut. If we had such a President, it would be easy to get rid of $85 billion. There is so much waste, so many duplicate programs that we could probably cut much more than $85 billion. All of this before tackling entitlements. Obama isn’t interested in cutting government, he’s interested in expanding it. He isn’t interested in negotiating with Republicans or offering a plan, he’s interested in demonizing them. The world was supposed to come to an end today, yet here we are and all is perfectly fine.