SMOKING GUN: Obama Administration Artificially Making Sequester Difficult

With obnoxious decisions such as cancelling White House tours and threatening to cancel Blue Angels air shows, the Obama Administration seems to be making a point of making the sequester unpopular.

One might even wonder if the Obama regime is artificially making sequester “cuts” difficult for political reasons, in order to make those evil Republicans look bad.  But surely a U. S. President and his administration would not willfully engage in bad management of spending restraints in order to sow political discontent, right? Right?

WRONG.

An e-mail exchange makes it clear that it is indeed policy within the Obama regime to make the sequester “cuts” noxious, even to the point of more or less ordering administrators not to engage in sensible prioritizing.

In the email sent Monday by Charles Brown, an official with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service office in Raleigh, N.C., Mr. Brown asked “if there was any latitude” in how to spread the sequester cuts across the region to lessen the impacts on fish inspections.

He said he was discouraged by officials in Washington, who gave him this reply: “We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.” [Emphasis mine.]

This is a smoking gun, and there may be more to come.  The Obama regime wants the sequester to be difficult for the public, and they are taking measures to make it that way.

This e-mail exchange is a small part of a big picture.  Instead of actually governing and negotiating, Obama flies around campaigning and saying the sequester will be horrible because of those eeeevil Republicans.  (Never mind that the sequester was Obama’s idea in the first place and that he insisted on it.)  And then, lo and behold, word goes down through the bureaucracy that underlings have darn well better be sure that the sequester is indeed horrible.

Charles Krauthammer summarizes what the Obama regime is up to quite well:

"The worst-case scenario for us," a leading anti-budget-cuts lobbyist told The Washington Post, "is the sequester hits and nothing bad really happens."

Think about that. Worst case? That a government drowning in debt should cut back by 2.2 percent [The sequester doesn’t even do that much, but I’m nit-picking – ed.] -- and the country survives. That a government now borrowing 35 cents of every dollar it spends reduces that borrowing by two cents "and nothing bad really happens." Oh, the humanity!

A normal citizen might think this a good thing. For reactionary liberalism, however, whatever sum our ever-inflating government happens to spend today (now double what Bill Clinton spent in his last year) is the Platonic ideal -- the reduction of which, however minuscule, is a national calamity.

Or damn well should be. Otherwise, people might get the idea that we can shrink government, and live on.

Hence the president's message. If the "sequestration" -- automatic spending cuts -- goes into effect, the skies will fall. Plane travel jeopardized, carrier groups beached, teachers furloughed.

The administration has every incentive to make the sky fall, lest we suffer that terrible calamity -- cuts the nation survives. Are they threatening to pare back consultants, conferences, travel and other nonessential fluff? Hardly. It shall be air-traffic control. Meat inspection. Weather forecasting.

Exactly.  And now we have hard evidence that is indeed what the Obama regime is doing.