OUTRAGE: Harry Reid Ties Nevada Marine Tragedy to Sequester

I knew Demorats would go and are going to extreme lengths to make the sequester and Republicans look bad.  I knew Harry Reid is a conniving crooked liar.  (And trust me when I say I am putting that nicely.)  But I did not expect him to stoop this incredibly low.  In Harry Reid's own words:

As I indicated, it was quite a big explosion. We’ll follow this news very closely. I will do whatever I can going forward to support the United States military and the families of the fallen Marines.

Mr. President, it’s very important we continue training our military, so important. But one of the things in sequester is we cut back in training and maintenance. That’s the way sequester was written. Now, the bill that’s on the floor, we hope to pass today helps that a little bit. At least in the next six months, it allows the military some degree of ability to move things around a little bit. Flexibility, we call it, and that’s good. But we have to be very vigilant. This sequester should go away. We have cut already huge amounts of money in deficit reduction. It’s just not appropriate, Mr. President, that our military can’t train and do the maintenance necessary.

These men and women, our Marines were training there in Hawthorne. And with this sequester, it’s going to cut back this stuff.

Marines (who pointed out that if they could not do all the safety precautions, they would not do the exercise) and just about anyone else with any decency are outraged. 

Most Democrats are not.

And that includes the Mainstream Noos Media.  Can you imagine the media outrage if a Republican had said something like this?

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.