The sequester may be "dumb," as the president says, but one thing it is, is interesting. Especially the politics.
First off, it slashes defense spending, which Democrats want and most Republicans don't. With the exceptions of Hawaii and Maryland, the deepest defense cuts are being felt in the red (or purple) states so intent on shrinking government.
Irony abounds. Note the spectacle of red-state politicians fighting off tax hikes that would hit hardest on the blue states, where incomes are higher.
Let's talk about Virginia, whose economy will be most hurt by the squeeze on civilian defense jobs. Thanks to the war on terror, a civilization of gleaming new office towers had spread across its northern countryside. No doubt these people are doing useful work, some of them. But inadequate attention has been paid to what the taxpayers were getting in return.
Look at Fairfax, Arlington, Loudon, Alexandria and other government-subsidized paradises. Admire their gracious housing developments, Northern Italian eateries, Lexus vendors, Tiffany stores, Cartier representatives and other purveyors of the high life.
Of the 10 richest counties in America, six are in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. In the recent recession, unemployment in Arlington County, where the Pentagon resides, never passed 5 percent. Now, due to the sequester, 90,000 civilian defense workers based in Virginia will experience temporary layoffs, and the state could head into recession.
Republicans insist that they'd rather see this almost $1 trillion in forced social and military spending cuts over 10 years than another penny of tax revenues. That he originally supported sequestration must be a great political inconvenience to Eric Cantor, the Virginia rep now serving as Republican house majority leader.
Politics aside, it appears that the warring parties have blindly stumbled onto a way to reach the goal of cutting deficits by $4 trillion over the decade. We get there by adding the sequester, the $1.5 trillion in spending cuts started in 2011, President Obama's $700 billion tax hike on rich people and the $700 billion to be saved in interest on the debt.
While this is no way to run a railroad, the train may be reaching its destination in a fashion. So, has your correspondent lost her mind and joined the tea party?
The answer is "no." Here's where she differs radically from the Republican right:
This obsession with shrinking government makes no sense. It's pointless to brawl over whether government should be big, small or middling. We should decide what we want government to do — and ensure that government does it in an effective way. And except in economic downturns, we should pay for that government with tax revenues.
It is not true, as many on the right insist, that raising taxes fuels government spending. The opposite is true. When you force folks to pay outright for government, they look at the bill. Borrowing the money makes it seem like a free lunch. That's how the George W. Bush administration got away with cutting taxes, running two unfunded wars and starting a new Medicare drug benefit, not a penny of it paid for.
Here's where your writer agrees with the tea party: Much government spending is wasteful. The way to address that, however, is to go into the budget, identify the unnecessary, and fight the entrenched interests living off it.
We may not always agree on what is unnecessary, but putting a bowl over the head and chopping what's hanging out is an inelegant way to do a haircut. We're stuck with this approach right now, so let's see what happens. Perhaps this lemon of a leadership can produce some lemonade, even if only by accident.
To find out more about Froma Harrop, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
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And since Bush put all those unfunded programs in motion, I'm glad we now have a president that has reversed those policies and set things right again. Wait, Obama has only doubled down on Bush's policies. Opps. Arguing that we could have a big government as long as it is efficient makes a lot of sense in fariy tale land, but the reality is that the bigger the government is, the harder to control waste. So we do need to worry about the size of the government unless Froma has a sweeping plan to stop all this wasteful spending. I'll be looking forward to that in her next article.
Also, the federal government still takes the same amount of taxes away from those states that want to shrink government. And now Froma is saying that lets still tax them the same, give them less back in the form of jobs, and that'll teach them to want smaller government. Thats the real dumb thing, not the sequester. I dare you to not tax those states, yet not give them any federal dollars, and their economies would do well. But to take taxes from them, give that money to other states, and say "here is your smaller government". Well thats just silly.
Comment: #1
Posted by: Chris McCoy
Tue Mar 5, 2013 6:23 AM
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No Froma much of government spending IS NOT WASTEFUL.
Such a grotesque generalized statement applied so broadly without any proof whatsoever is a complete and total lie.
Isn't it time you stop being a convenient idiot for the Right Wing in order to make yourself appear to understand both sides.
In any case there is NO absolute fair and unbiased definition of "wasteful" that can be applied to any sort of spending, so using it just demonstrates a yellow streak that I rarely see in your opinions.
While there are many positions to take on the sequester that are valid, one that is not is positioning yourself to give the GOP cover for what is truly a horrible policy.
In doing so you make yourself look like a desperate opportunist looking for an angle to exploit rather than a serious editorialist.
Comment: #2
Posted by: jonathan seer
Tue Mar 5, 2013 8:27 AM
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Ma'am;... Yes it is that awful; that for profit, and for the preservation of our most protected class from taxation, and for allowing those with the least at stake the most power in government- we have seen the government broken, and this people long suffering the want of representative government now loaded with the debt of a bankrupt society...
We are not all crooks, spendthrifts, or profligates... We have all lived with less, and have for a long time been unjustly forced to live with less... Many of us have accepted a lesser morality from government than we would practice our own lives but never without some encouragement from religous leaders, or with the ancient desire for vengeance... The actual price of the failure of free enterprise has for a long time been rolled up in the price of government, and we have grown used to it... We are paying a great price for the constitutional inability of government to govern the economy on the presumption and principal that the economy would always serve the people of this country; and that was before free enterprise became so international...
We are seeing clearly our own moral and finaincial bankruptcy... Our great moral question which we are to date wrongly answering is: Will we see our least powerful, and least responsible citizens suffer the failure of the economy that has been thrown back on the very people so long unsupported by the economy... If the rich who are responsible for the failure of the economy though they have had every advantage of law and a free grab at the commonwealth cannot make it support us all, and can only squeeze their own extravagant support out of it, then it is time for a total reconsideration of our relations with private property...
We are certainly being demoralized, but nationally... We would not do personally what we do of course through our government... We allow churches for political and financial purposes to dominate our moral choices and pervert us from the practice of true Christianity...Even if you detest some group like the black people, when faced with the hunger and want of some black infant, few would not open their hearts and pockets at the sight of suffering humanity... But practically, because government gives us little of choice, and few of the facts, and supports our isolation, and political and economic distance, we do not have to know of good or evil what is the end of our political considerations... It is wrong, and to allow that wrong, to ignore human suffering only because it is hidden behind government bloat is wrong..
It may be justice itself, if people can be tricked into war for vengeance against the wrong people on the promise by others that oil will pay for it when it is not our oil; that they should pay for it and well... In fact; if we do not demand morality of ourselves we are unfit for democracy, as democracy is the way we express our morality to each other... We cannot expect our government, what ever form it takes to be more moral than ourselves, but we should stand appalled to see it as immoral as it is, handing us the debts of another as though our own...We never offered to buy every one in the place a meal; and it is not the fault of the beggers at the door that we are charged...
The financial bankruptcy of the government built so much upon the financial success of a fraction of people is a crime that comes out of the long practice of laying the cost of govenment on those least able to resist...Yet; the inevitable question arises: If government will not tax the rich though it has the power to do so, then why should anyone throw a penny more down that rat hole???
Bankrupt governments invite revolutions that are successful because the government can not justify its existence or defend itself...It is not for sport that people revolt, but for the necessity of asserting its moral authority and moral existence... The sequester means only bankruptcy, and it reveals the extent to which people will no longer support stupidity... It is a bad sign only if you support our failed government..
Thanks... Sweeney
Comment: #3
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Tue Mar 5, 2013 9:25 AM
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Re: jonathan seer;... Sir, .. Republics are commonwealths, and in our commonwealth the rich were given special rights and a big part of government... They were also allowed the bulk of the commonwealth in the expectation that there it would support their government...
We only have the income tax out of the honest efforts of many good people to see the financial powers of this country taxed as fairly as any small land owner...Since that time, the income tax has been pushed down onto any one with any possibility of paying it just to cut the rich some slack...If the government can't get the poor to pay more since our wages are continually being forced lower while the cost of living is forever raised higher, then it better go after the rich who were the original target for the income tax...The waste of government, and no doubt there is such a thing, is either to benefit the rich, or the wasters themselves...
Every bit of law designed to protect the rich from the poor is a waste of time... Every law written and enforced that defends injustice, and prevents the prosecution of obvious law breaking on the part of the rich is a waste... Consider all these people who call Mr. Obama a socialist... Consider how many bankers went to prison over the last savings and loan crash, and how few have went to prison for this latest crash- which has been close to zero...
There is no moral protection for the people... Both democrats and republicans and most of the press think the working people just have to buckle up, and bear this thing... The whole bunch of these people are a waste of life...Will none of them recognize how much ground we have lost, how many dreams we have had to surrender to profit, how much we have seen of our industry essential to our defense relocated beyond the reach of our tax men leaving us with nothing to fight for, and nothing to defend but our pitiful lives???...
Certainly the law which permits the keeping of people in ignorance, and which brutalizes them at every opportunity is a waste, but it has the advantage of other wasteful activities of being a growth industry... We can count on more of it being needed every year with no end in sight, and no way to pay for it all...
We can say the same of the military, that the more we have the more we need because some people with the power will see it as the key to more wealth and more power yet; and wave the flag and beat the drums for war in the certain knowledge that the patriotism of the people can be played upon forever and ever and ever as they see their own material condition deteriorate... People suffering injustice export their injustice by way of war, and import poverty by the same route...
The educational system that tries to teach the people that free enterprise is the path to success when it has clearly been the path to their poverty will always be a monument to waste, failure and frustration...To teach success to people who have some sight of it is nothing.... To teach success to those who know nothing of it is like teaching a myth with no star of reference...Worst of all is to teach that money is honor since poverty is so clearly dishonor...Then people will not care how they get their wealth, and who should; when no body else cares how they get their wealth- so long as they are not poor...
This society creates failure, but for every failure there is a concerted effort to find the reason in the morality of the poor... What has that person done or not done to deserve his poverty... Has he not studied??? Has he not learned??? Has he not worked??? Has he loved too freely, or not saved freely enough??? Did he not pray??? You see; that no one wants to admit that poverty creates immoraltiy as much as wealth, and that only moral people want what is their due, or will accept less than...
Poverty demoralizes, and puts a price on every virtue, and wealth does the pricing... So; there is plenty of waste to go around, and only part of it is in government by choice... The rest has spread like gangrene from our economy through the veins of the people into the government...People say that organizations rot from the top down, but that tide ebbs and flows... We cannot survive morally in the face of an immoral government and economy... We cannot expect this government or any to be more moral than the people... We have to clean up our act together...
Thanks...Sweeney
Comment: #4
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Tue Mar 5, 2013 11:11 AM
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