How Obama's misleading on sequestration...and why Congress shouldn't listen

Levin discussed this on Friday, but since many begin tuning out in anticipation of the weekend (including yours truly), I thought it beneficial to hold this one over until Monday morning...fresh on your mind. It primarily revolves around Bob Woodward's piece in the Washington Post, exposing the sequester fear tactic for what it is...and the fact that it's directly coming from the man who indeed approved it. Ed Morrissey did a commendable job of encapsulating the particulars over the weekend...

HotAir: Success may have a thousand fathers, and failure be an orphan, but don’t doubt the parentage of the sequester. After yet another week of White House denials of paternity and a new layer of hysteria over the nature of the cuts involved, Bob Woodward reminds us again who came up with the plan in the first place. As he reported in his book The Price of Politics more than a year ago from on-the-record interviews with the players involved, the sequester was proposed by then-Chief of Staff Jack Lew and personally approved by President Barack Obama, before Harry Reid presented it to Republicans as a take-it-or-leave-it option to end the summer 2011 budget standoff.

Why lie about this? Woodward explains that shifting blame is a necessary part of moving the goal posts the actual issue at hand in August 2011. By that point, the real problem for Obama was the debt ceiling, and the sequester put off the question of both spending cuts and tax increases. Republicans had agreed at that point to a deal that included a 1:1 ratio of new revenues (through tax reform rather than rate increases) and spending cuts, but then Obama came back and wanted more revenues, which scotched the deal. With the debt ceiling approaching a crisis point, both goals got pushed aside in exchange for a punt and the sequester as a lever to force a decision down the road.

Besides, Republicans already compromised on the revenue side in January. Now it’s time to work on the spending cuts, but Obama clearly doesn’t want to cut anything from the budget. The nature of the cuts in the sequester and the disconnect from White House hysteria on them is so sharp as to dispel any doubt on that point.

...the sequester amounts to $1.2 trillion in reductions in the trajectory of spending growth over the next ten years, in which we project to spend $45 trillion. It amounts to a 2.7% decrease in overall spending over the decade, hardly Draconian or savage or whatever hyperventilated appellation one chooses to use. If we can’t agree to cut even that much, there is no hope for a broader budget reform that brings us back to balanced budgets in the future, and there aren’t enough taxes in the country to make up the difference from the other direction without killing the economy and wiping out revenue altogether.

Repeating Woodward's conclusion, "So when the president asks that a substitute for the sequester include not just spending cuts but also new revenue, he is moving the goal posts...that was not the deal he made."

With all the panic going on between D.C. and their media, the voters see it quite differently. Scott Rasmussen reports only D.C. is panicking about sequester cuts:

The expectation was that voters would rise up and protest the automatic spending cuts with such vehemence that it would force Republicans and Democrats to work together. But it hasn't happened.

...the reports spilling out of the nation's capital about the harm that the automatic cuts will do to the economy, they're unlikely to resonate with most voters. After all, 68 percent believe that cutting government spending is the best thing the government could do to help the economy.

...voters are likely to see the sequester as a failure for official Washington. It will be further proof that their elected officials are incapable of doing their jobs. So incapable, in fact, that automatic, arbitrary and thoughtless budget-cutting is a better option than anything Congress and the president could come up with.

But the real reason for the panic in Washington is that the American people ultimately may applaud the spending cuts. That might mark the beginning of the end for politics as usual.

The best advice for congressional Republicans: Don't listen to the liars!

[Last] week, we were “treated” to the ridiculous spectacle of a grandstanding president of the United States giving a campaign-like speech against his own ideas and policies. Barack Hussein Obama II referred to the upcoming “sequestration“, which was his idea, as like taking a “meat cleaver” to the economy.

The sky is falling! People will DIE! Millions will lose their jobs! Meat won’t be inspected! Children will have nobody to watch over and care for them! National security will be at risk! The border will be overrun! (As if it’s not overrun now, by design of the Obama administration.) Airplanes won’t fly! Unemployment will necessarily skyrocket! Mind you, $44 billion is what our government spends about every 9 days.

The sequestration is a “manufactured crisis,” Obama said. Indeed it is: A crisis manufactured by the White House.

Not only was the idea his idea, not only did he sign the bill to put sequestration into effect, but he also threatened to veto any attempt to stop the automatic cuts in the rate of growth!

The “automatic cuts” in the RATE OF GROWTH of spending take effect on March 1. That is, unless the Republicans cave in fear. Unless they listen to the liars.

Congressional Republicans: Don’t listen to the liars. The people are on your side.

...Americans want the deficit reduced, and they want it done mostly by spending cuts, not increased taxes.