Sequestration: The Facts About the Policy

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• The so-called sequester “cuts” aren’t even real cuts! This year the government will spend more of your money than they did last year, and next year they will spend even more. If you spent more money year after year, you wouldn’t say you were cutting spending, so why does Washington get away with it?

• Overspending is overspending, no matter which way you look at it. Spending $800 that you don’t have on your credit card instead of $1000, doesn’t mean you cut $200 of spending. It means you’re still overspending by $800.

• Only an extremist would want to stop the sequester. As the National Taxpayers Union said, it is a starting point, not a finish line. Politicians will never actually cut spending if we let the spending radicals like Nancy Pelosi stop us from taking this small step forward.

• The amount of the so-called “cuts” would be enough to run the government for only 4.5 days, and the spending radicals like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid want us to believe that the sequester will be “devastating.”

On the President’s flip-flop:

• As the president’s own press secretary admitted, the sequester was President Obama’s idea in the first place. American families are tired of him playing politics and blaming others for his own ideas.

• In July 2011, a White House fact sheet praised the deal that gave us the sequester as “a win for the economy and budget discipline.” At the time, President Obama said it didn’t impact the middle class or working families. Now he says it does. He was either lying then, or he’s lying now.

 Other points:

• What is the sequester anyway? In a nutshell, the sequester is a deal that the President signed into law that says the government will overspend a little less this year than they did last year. That’s it. So they’re still overspending.

• A recent poll conducted by Anderson Robbins Research and Shaw & Company Research shows that 73% of Americans want the government to cut spending, while only 15% want increased spending. The time is now to do what the majority of the American people want done.

• Everyone agrees that we need to reduce the deficit. Let’s start now by keeping the sequester in place, and making the politicians keep their promises, and uphold the laws they pass.

• We need to become an economically sustainable nation. The sequester is a step in the right direction. Don’t let politicians and their well-connected friends stop this little bit of badly-needed progress.

• Recently, Nancy Pelosi said that cutting Congressional pay would undermine their “dignity.” Could she be any more insulting? What about the dignity of the millions of Americans that are still out of work? Or the dignity of younger generations that will be burdened by the massive debt that paid politicians like Nancy Pelosi have racked up? What’s undignified is making a promise to the American people that you will cut spending and then trying to weasel your way out of it when the time comes, hoping that you’ll be retired before the bills come due.

Amy Payne February 19, 2013 at 7:32 am

Federal budget cuts called “sequestration” are scheduled to hit in just 10 days. The sequestration cuts are not perfect—they’re a blunt instrument to cut spending, rather than a deliberative plan that sets priorities, trims entitlements, and cuts other spending. But they are law. It would be better to replace them with smarter cuts, but the reality is that Washington has to start cutting spending now. Real program reforms and a balanced budget are the only way to solve our continuing fiscal crises. So it is critical that Congress keep its word and follow through on these spending cuts to prove it is serious about bringing our budget into balance over the next 10 years. Now that the March 1 deadline is approaching, the President is urging Congress to offset the sequestration budget cuts with more tax increases. That’s simply unacceptable, says Heritage’s Grover M. Hermann Senior Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs, Patrick Louis Knudsen: “President Obama has already pocketed a $618 billion tax increase, so simply holding the line against taxes is a given.” Lawmakers shouldn’t be fooled by the President’s rhetoric on a “balanced” approach to sequestration or any other budget issue—that simply means he’s looking to raise taxes again. Instead, they should be focusing on true balance—balancing the federal budget in the next 10 years. Producing a budget would be a start, but balancing that budget is the way to put the country back on track. Knudsen explains:

Government spending and debt are both too high, and thisthreatens all Americans with a weaker economy and a lower standard of living. Every opportunity to reduce spending and put the government on the path to a balanced budget must be taken. Anything less is a path to defeat.

We need spending cuts that are targeted to the programs that need reforms—the entitlements that are the major drivers of our growing deficit. Sequestration leaves many programs like Social Security, welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid untouched, while having devastating effects on national security. Trying to use defense cuts to balance the out-of-control entitlement spending while we still face growing threats (Russia, China, Iran, and al-Qaeda affiliates) is a fool’s errand that will create a hollow military and do nothing to fix economic troubles. But if Congress does not replace the sequestration cuts with smarter cuts—like eliminating Obamacare funding or other ineffective programs—then the sequestration cuts will be our first step toward getting serious about federal spending. The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation

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2013-02-19 18:06:58

Source: http://massteaparty.org/2013/02/sequestration-the-facts-about-the-policy/