Monday, March 04, 2013

A Pox On All Their Houses

Look, I don’t care whether we reduce the deficit or not. I am with neither the Republicans or the Democrats on this “sequester” nonsense, and I don’t care whether or not it is implemented because I fail to see how a 2% cut in federal spending is going to significantly affect us one way or the other.

What I do object to is the utter dishonesty with which both sides approach the issue and at this point, unusually enough, the Democrats are being the more dishonest of the two. What I do object to is the insatiable demand of the American public for being provided with endless government programs and benefits and being totally unwilling to pay for them.

The Democrats are wrong on this issue. Usually I am critical with the way Democrats are going about an issue, have issues with their tactics in dealing with it, but accept that they are on the right side of the issue. On this one they are just plain wrong.

Arguing over whether the sequester should be tax increases or spending cuts at this point is an exercise in demagoguery, because the sequester is a done deal for spending cuts, signed sealed and delivered; passed by Congress and signed into law by the President. You don’t change legislation after it has become law.

There is a provision in the law that other spending cuts could be substituted for the ones spelled out in the sequester, but there is no provision that it could consist of anything other than spending cuts. There were other provisions in the law that Democrats sought, including but not limited to an increase in the federal debt ceiling, and the sequester was a concession to the Republican demand for spending cuts in return for that debt ceiling increase and other things that Democrats wanted.

The Democrats got what they wanted and now they don’t want to honor their part of the agreement and deliver that which they agreed to provide to meet Republican demands.

Further, they got Republicans to agree to a $150 billion annual tax increase only one month ago and are now claiming that Republicans are “inflexible on taxes” and that the sequester cannot be resolved because the Republicans “refuse to budge on taxes,” even though the sequester is not about taxes.

And the American public buys these lies because they have a knee-jerk reflex to being given benefits by the government and being totally unwilling to pay for them. When 2% of the slop in their feeding trough is threatened they rise up in outrage and demand that the spending cuts be replaced with “taxes on the rich” so that they can continue their feeding frenzy with someone else paying the cost.

Ten-year-old children expect that everything will be given to them at no cost. Adults usually accept that they have to open their wallets when they want something; that there is no free lunch. The voters of this nation are contemptible in their insatiable childish demands for government spending and “tax the rich.”

1 comment:

  1. bruce8:17 PM

    Agreed on the political BS. Many people of all ages seem to think they can have *whatever* and somehow it will be provided. By whom? Europeans typically pay large percentages in taxes, but they get something for it (typically universal health care) and they are not complaining. And there is far too much kicking the can down the road. As far as deficit cutting, it's too big to simply cut. It would gut a lot of the governments programs and stuff, both good and bad. Sorry situation, political and sociological.

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