President Obama proposed the soon to be enacted sequester, demanded it be part of the debt deal, signed it into law and angrily promised to veto the GOP efforts to repeal it. Now, like Dr. Frankenstein, he’s running from his own creation.
It is an intentional untruth to say sequester cuts must come from police officers and schools. It’s a tiny cut that barely moves the needle on federal spending. You can meet sequester targets by instead eliminating a small amount of waste. $84 Billion in spending can be cut without touching critical programs like police, schools and NASA.
House Republicans have passed two different bills to replace Obama’s plan to cut critical services. Senate Democrats refuse to hold a vote on it and Obama once vowed to veto any plans to stop his sequester. Republicans have provided alternative spending reductions, but Democrats have rejected them and seem committed to blind, across-the-board cuts to scare people. We need to “encourage” Democrats to support intelligent cuts.
Here are five simple spending cuts suggested by Rep. Steve Stockton which meet Obama’s sequester reduction targets without cuts to essential programs.
- Eliminate the government’s “free cell phone” plan that has ballooned into the ObamaPhone giveaway, 41 percent of which goes to people not even eligible (sorry but a cell phone is not essential to survival): $2.2 billion in savings
- Eliminate ObamaCare’s “Public Health Slush Fund,” which even Democrats want to eliminate: $10 billion in savings
- Require food stamp recipients, the numbers of which have exploded under Obama, to actually be eligible for food stamps: $26 billion in savings
- Eliminate overpayments for ObamaCare exchange subsidies: $44 billion in savings
- Eliminate Obama’s “renewable energy” fund in the Energy Department: $1.8 billion in savings
The “sky is falling” approach to the sequester the President and democrats have taken after THEY created it is the height of hypocrisy.
I say let the sky fall and watch as the sun rises in the morning.