The sequester is an issue only because the President has consciously refused, throughout his four years in office, to propose any entitlement reforms. Can anyone name a single entitlement reform that President Obama has specifically advocated, in public, and made even a token effort to implement? (Please, don’t count the phantom savings that we will never see from purported healthcare reforms. Even the most ardent apologists concede that the short-term truth is clearly the opposite.)
Since nearly 60% of the budget is off limits, the sequester hits even harder. And the President has compounded the folly by making no effort to direct these cuts at non-essential services, instead preferring that they fall on the most useful ones, thereby wreaking maximum inconvenience on ordinary citizens. Can it really be that the cuts at the TSA need to be at the airport scanning personnel level? We couldn’t make a few cuts at the handbook-writing, convention-planning level?
Can it really be true that the President and Congress cannot find 6 percent savings in all discretionary spending by a Government that expands nearly that much year after year? Or, to be more rational about it, that we cannot find 2.5% savings across the entire budget, or just half of the annual increase?
What we have seen, and is still playing out now, is politics, not responsible public policy. The sad thing about this is that it’s not even good politics. Had the President gone to the American people in late 2009 and, to steal a quote, asked everyone to “eat our peas” — by adopting Simpson-Bowles or something very close to it – the country would have begun a real economic recovery, and he would have been easily re-elected in 2012, with a higher percentage of the popular vote, not to mention avoiding the disastrous 2010 Tea Party takeover of the House.
It’s still not too late.
LastReasonableMan 
Kaplan, your Simpson-Bowles Essay royally surprised me! It was cogent, concise & CORRECT! How did a Lib Fool like you stumble onto the truth?!
The Mainstream Media does everything possible to gloss over Obama’s inexperience & fear of political confrontation. He SUBLET his signature ObamaCare legislation to those doctrinaire Dem idiots Pelosi & Reid–now the nation sees the utter FOLLY of ObamaCare, with health premiums escalating in national double digits.
As you sagely point out, that greenhorn Obama created the Simpson-Bowles Commission to tackle runaway entitlements… Then he pretended the whole thing was a bad dream. What with the Benghazi murder fiasco, how did that narcissistic community- organizer get re-elected?
Look at Gitmo, record food stamps & disability pay-outs; illegals & “poor” (your word) people gaming our porous welfare system; $16,7 Trillion in debt, trillion-dollar deficits in front of us; school children dropping out for always more “education money” spent; our futile never-ending world-war on Muslim “terror” which Obama hates to admit; Muslim terror-bombings in our cities–what the hell are you proud of in this incompetent Government of ours?!
You have made some really good points there. I looked on the web for more info about the issue and found most
people will go along with your views on this website.
Dear Lee KapMan: Our advancing age must be both wizening and mellowing us. Despite my known “conservatism,” I somehow agree with most the blogs displayed herein. Have our magnetic poles flipped their polarity? Has Demo developed humility and lost fifty pounds? Will Colonial continue to party and thrive? I am embarrassed by the right wing ranting of Pop-off Perry, Dewhurst, Patrick, & even Tiger Cruz who seems more enamored of himself than our country. Lee, my eternal dilemma is simultaneously advocating conservative economic/government principles while supporting liberal social issues such as gender/homosexual justice, liberal abortion rights, free speech, etc. I suppose all that makes me a Libertine Libertarian! I think you write well and persuasively, and will be checking in on your blogs. If you write something wrong or stupid (nobody’s perfect), I’ll respond with the ferocity of Sheila Jackson Lee bulling her fat ass to an open microphone at a rich black funeral. Good luck; I remain, your Alpha Male buddy, –Capt. Don Kinkaid, ’69; Princeton, ’73; U. T. Law, ’76; Baker Botts, ’76… (“Look familiar??”)
Sent from iPhone Don W.
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