A picture is worth 1,000 words: Sequestration in perspective

Where Could We POSSIBLY Cut the Federal Budget?

If you had to cut your family’s budget, where would you cut?

Would you immediately start starving your children and stop wearing shoes? Of course not. You would look at the extras in your life—whether they were coffee shop lattes, movie tickets, or restaurant meals.

It’s a good thing the President wouldn’t be handling your budget. As Dan Holler of our sister organization, Heritage Action for America, has said: “If President Obama were making the decision for your family… he’d tell you to stop buying gas for your car and explain how you could only eat five days a week.”

Now that President Obama has turned against sequestration, he is suggesting that spending cuts to federal agencies must result in dire consequences. Firefighters, emergency responders, and teachers will all be cut, he claims. Media outlets have played up these sob stories, copying White House releases in their local news stories and soliciting sad testimonials from people who supposedly would be affected by these cuts.

But the question remains: Why would federal agencies cut their most vital assets instead of trimming around the edges? After all, the sequestration cuts are only 2.4 percent of federal spending.

Take a couple of examples.

President Obama said that “Air traffic controllers and airport security will see cutbacks, which means more delays at airports across the country.”

It won’t come as a surprise to most Americans that there is waste and inefficiency at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). In fact, a congressional report “found that TSA is wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.” Another report found that the TSA “has continually grown its ranks despite fewer travelers.”

President Obama said that “Thousands of teachers and educators will be laid off.”

First of all, as Heritage researchers have pointed out, “No federal education program operated by the Department of Education directly funds teacher salaries—this is a state and local responsibility.” And there are plenty of programs where inefficiencies are burdening our education system. A congressional report listed a number of duplicative or ineffective education programs that could be cut.

As if these exaggerations weren’t enough, Reason.com reported that the Office of Management and Budget warned of sequestration cuts to an agency that doesn’t even exist. As Reason’s Mike Riggs noted, this raises questions about the accuracy of the Administration’s attempted impact statements.

There is one area where the sequestration cuts will have harsher impacts—national defense. Heritage has warned of the impact on military readiness and America’s ability to defend itself, because defense bears a much larger portion of the cuts than the rest of the budget. The President is now acting concerned about the military after paying it little mind throughout the sequestration debate, using a shipyard as his backdrop for today’s anti-sequestration pep talk.

It makes no sense to hit defense the hardest with these cuts, while sequestration leaves major entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicaid untouched. Congress should reprogram these spending cuts to target the waste and inefficiencies it has already identified in federal agencies—like those listed above. Heritage’s Patrick Louis Knudsen, the Grover M. Hermann Senior Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs, even helpfully outlined places to find $150 billion in spending cuts that would make a lot more sense.

So no, we don’t have to fire firefighters and teachers and airport screeners. What Congress should be doing is what every American family does—tightening its budget by cutting things that are unnecessary.

http://blog.heritage.org/2013/02/26/sequestration-where-could-we-possibly-cut-the-federal-budget/?roi=echo3-14688048924-11584651-0a7eb18d533f1aa45a6fb3f976d434d6&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

Video: Carney Flees Questions on OFA Selling Access to the Presidency

We'll get to Carney's harried peace-out momentarily, but first let's get you up to speed. Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that Organizing for Action (OFA) -- the post-election iteration of Obama's campaign apparatus -- is busy raising tens of millions of dollars to help apply political pressure on behalf of the president's second term agenda. Times reporter Nicholas Confessore describes one of OFA's unorthodox fundraising methods that is garnering additional scrutiny:

In private meetings and phone calls, Mr. Obama’s aides have made clear that the new organization will rely heavily on a small number of deep-pocketed donors, not unlike the “super PACs” whose influence on political campaigns Mr. Obama once deplored. At least half of the group’s budget will come from a select group of donors who will each contribute or raise $500,000 or more, according to donors and strategists involved in the effort. Unlike a presidential campaign, Organizing for Action has been set up as a tax-exempt “social welfare group.” That means it is not bound by federal contribution limits, laws that bar White House officials from soliciting contributions, or the stringent reporting requirements for campaigns....Contributions will also translate into access, according to donors courted by the president’s aides. Next month, Organizing for Action will hold a “founders summit” at a hotel near the White House, where donors paying $50,000 each will mingle with Mr. Obama’s former campaign manager, Jim Messina, and Mr. Carson, who previously led the White House Office of Public Engagement. Giving or raising $500,000 or more puts donors on a national advisory board for Mr. Obama’s group and the privilege of attending quarterly meetings with the president, along with other meetings at the White House. Moreover, the new cash demands on Mr. Obama’s top donors and bundlers come as many of them are angling for appointments to administration jobs or ambassadorships.

The media has managed to forgive a litany of Obama's self-serving reversals of "principle," but this potent pairing of flagrant flop-floppery and high-dollar presidential access-peddling proved too much even for MSNBC's Chuck Todd:

Just to review: The One abandoned his long-standing, ostensibly passionate support of public financing of elections in 2008, after he discovered that he could raise much more money on his own. Then, after railing against big money, slash-and-burn Super PACs as a "threat to our democracy," he gave his blessing to a Super PAC of his own in 2012 -- which infamously ended up slandering Mitt Romney in the most despicable ad of the entire cycle. Now his political team is soliciting six-figure donations from liberal millionaires, effective entrance fees to special White House meetings with the president. Barack Obama promised to change the way things work in Washington. He was right. I'll leave you with the clip I teased in the headline. Here's Jay Carney dumping on Republicans, natch, in an attempt to spin away OFA's unprecedented cash-for-access project. When a CNN correspondent presses for some additional information, Carney mutters something about contacting "the organization" and leaves the podium. Bye, guys:

But remember, this is the most transparent administration in American history.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2013/02/26/video-carney-flees-questions-on-ofa-selling-access-to-the-presidency-n1520372

Obama to state governors: I’ll take your questions, but first let’s kick out the media

What makes this moment extra precious, of course, is that the audience is a roomful of fellow elected officials. Literally everyone there is accountable to voters. So naturally the voters’ window on the proceedings needs to be shut.

WaPo’s Erik Wemple drops the O-bomb on O:

Seems there’s a contest of sorts going on within the White House: Who can fashion the most Orwellian quote regarding open government? Here’s the quote that Obama had to beat, from White House counterterrorism chief John O. Brennan at his confirmation hearing to be the director of the Central Intelligence Agency: “What we need to do is optimize transparency on these issues, but at the same time, optimize secrecy and the protection of our national security.”

Was he about to brief them on troop movements or something? What’s so sensitive that it can be said in an open forum in front of dozens of state officials but not with cameras rolling? My guess is that he’s worried that if he does a Q&A on TV in the middle of sequestermania, the temptation to grandstand will prove too great for some governors and the process will quickly degenerate into a partisan pissing match. (This is a core argument for keeping cameras out of the Supreme Court too.) But so what? Obama did just fine parrying Republican questions at the GOP retreat three years ago. If some red-state governor wants to stand up and demand the end of ObamaCare, that’s O’s big chance to endear himself to the left by beating the questioner down. Last week, after the media’s grumbling over its lack of access to Obama went public, Nate Silver tweeted that it’d be a fine idea for O to do a “question time” session with Congress periodically like the British PM does with parliament. This meeting with the governors was as close as we’re apt to get to that in his second term. He shut it down instantly.

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/02/25/obama-to-state-governors-ill-take-your-questions-but-first-lets-kick-out-the-media/

GAO Report: ObamaCare Will Add $6.2 Trillion to Long-Term Deficit

Well in a not-so-surprising report from the Government Accountability Office, it turns out that ObamaCare is estimated to add another $6.2 trillion to the long-term deficit. The National Review says,

Senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), who requested the report, revealed the findings this morning at a Senate Budget Committee hearing. The report, he said, “confirms everything critics and Republicans were saying about the faults of this bill,” and “dramatically proves that the promises made assuring the nation that the largest new entitlement program in history would not add one dime to the deficit were false.”

President Obama and other Democrats attempted to win support for the health-care bill by touting it as a fiscally responsible enterprise. “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits — either now or in the future,” Obama told a joint-session of Congress in September 2009. “I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period.”
The new report exposes the “lack of honesty” surrounding such claims, Sessions argued. “This is how a country goes broke,” he said.

The honesty from the Obama administration and the President is just not there. Instead of lying to the people, the President needed to explain that his health care bill would be extremely costly and would be implemented as a tax. Maybe if the legislators who passed the bill had read it first, that may have prevented this long-term deficit increasing policy from going through.

How many times must President Obama lie to the American people and our legislators before we call him out on it? The president is driving us further and further into debt with his deficit spending habits.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/heatherginsberg/2013/02/26/gao-report-obamacare-will-add-62-trillion-to-longterm-deficit-n1520770

Chris Matthews Offers To Help Hillary’s 2016 Campaign: ‘We’ll Get You In There’

According to TV critic David Zurawik, MSNBC's hiring of ex-Obama officials David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs makes the so-callend news network almost "a bona fide organ of state propaganda."

Hours after this was published Monday, Hardball's Chris Matthews offered his services to Hillary Clinton - along with those of MSNBC contributors Howard Fineman and Joan Walsh - in order to get her elected president in 2016.

At the end of a lengthy discussion about Clinton's chances in 2016 - never mind that Election Day is 44 months away! - Walsh said, "I think if she runs again, she really can't run as that front-runner. It cannot be that inevitability campaign that she ran in 2007, and she knows that. She's got to be about the future."

Matthews replied, "If you're watching, Madam Secretary, all three of us have brilliant ideas. All of us have great ideas. And I especially put myself in that group with Joan and David. We know how to do this, we’ll get you in there."

Although there may have been a little tongue in Matthews' cheek, everyone watching knew full well that he meant it, and that his mission in the next 44 months - as well as that of likely every MSNBC contributor and guest - is to get Clinton in the White House.

What's interesting is how the folks on this almost satirical news network don't even feel like they have to hide it anymore.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2013/02/25/chris-matthews-offers-help-hillary-s-2016-campaign-we-ll-get-you-ther#ixzz2M1bsEyMy

Get Ready for Obama's Impending Economic Free fall

Despite what the president may say when the Day of Reckoning finally arrives, he is ultimately responsible for what is likely to take place.

Unbeknownst to most Americans and despite the fact that inflation at the grocery store and at the gas pump is beginning to take its toll, the simple fact that the dollar is the global reserve currency has protected U.S. citizens from the kind of commodity price increases that set off the Arab Spring in Tunisia. But things are beginning to change rapidly. Iran is moving ahead with its plan to trade oil in other currencies besides the dollar on March 20, 2013:

Last week, the Tehran Times noted that the Iranian oil bourse will start trading oil in currencies other than the dollar from March 20. This long-planned move is part of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's vision of economic war with the west.

"The dispute over Iran's nuclear programme is nothing more than a convenient excuse for the US to use threats to protect the 'reserve currency' status of the dollar," the newspaper, which calls itself the voice of the Islamic Revolution, said.

"Recall that Saddam [Hussein] announced Iraq would no longer accept dollars for oil purchases in November 2000 and the US-Anglo invasion occurred in March 2003," the Times continued. "Similarly, Iran opened its oil bourse in 2008, so it is a credit to Iranian negotiating ability that the 'crisis' has not come to a head long before now."

Iran has the third-largest oil reserves in the world and pricing oil in currencies other than dollars is a provocative move aimed at Washington. If Iran switches to the non-dollar terms for its oil payments, there could be a new oil price that would be denominated in euro, yen or even the yuan or rupee.

India is already in talks with Iran over how it can pay for its oil in rupees.

The dollar's position as the global reserve currency has been under attack for several years now. A sampling of recent articles on the subject point to the ramifications of a shift in the dollar's status:

I have focused attention of this crucial issue for a couple of years. Two of my commentaries address it specifically:

What does this economic gobbledygook mean for average Americans? This is the simple answer: you can expect inflation to skyrocket at some point in the near future and with it will come a rapid decline in our nation's ability to influence global political events. The root cause is misguided U.S. policies, and since policies are a function of people, in this case that means President Obama is to blame. He has had four years to right the ship of state, but he has failed the test.

As the dollar loses the protection provided by its global reserve currency status and countries are no longer required to stockpile dollars for oil trades, the dollar will rise or fall in value based on the strength of the U.S. economy. So will interests rates and inflation. Unfortunately, with deficit spending looming for as far as the eye can see and our debt burden growing more ominous every day, that doesn't bode well for the dollar's ability to compete on an even playing field.

Our government officials in Washington should have dealt with our debt and deficit problems before our economic situation deteriorated to a crisis point, but they didn't and calamity is just around the corner. For example, our penchant for routinely spending more than we collect in tax revenue, subsidizing able bodied men and women who contribute virtually nothing to our economy, paying the bills of illegal aliens who should not even be in our country, and ignoring our burgeoning debt problem because interest rates are at historically low levels have the effect of weakening our economy at a time when we should be doing everything that is humanly possible to shore it up.

It's obvious that President Obama is incapable of dealing with the serious problems that we face. His first term in office provided all of the evidence we needed to prove that he is an ideologue who is willing to do just about anything to advance his political agenda even if it means that the American people have to suffer needlessly.

Regrettably, President Obama was re-elected before the consequences of his dismal first term performance became obvious to average Americans, but the day is rapidly approaching when they will feel the effects of his ineptitude in dramatic ways. From energy policy to foreign policy to environmental policy to fiscal policy to social policy, Obama has set our nation on a collision course with reality.

Economic principles don't change because an ideologue is in the Oval Office. History teaches that the laws governing how economies work prevail in the long-run and that nations ignoring them pay the price. Even so, President Obama is a master at the art of misdirection and he is a world-class dissembler and placer of blame. That's why died-in-the-wool Obama supporters may never understand the truth. I hope that doesn't include most Americans, but given the results of the 2012 presidential election, I fear that it might.

Despite what the president may say when the Day of Reckoning finally arrives, he is ultimately responsible for what is likely to take place. I can't predict exactly when it will happen and I can't tell you how quickly the effects of his policies will devastate our economy when it's time to pay the fiddler, but I can say this: the U.S. economy is floundering at this pivotal moment and it's Obama's fault. Keep these things in mind as we move to the current crisis point -- sequestration, and rest assured that others will follow, probably in rapid succession. Buckle your seatbelts because we don't have four more years to fritter away.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/02/get_ready_for_obamas_impending_economic_free_fall.html#ixzz2M1nxADeX

Obama has failed to fill key government watchdog posts

President Barack Obama’s failure to fill numerous vacancies of chief government watchdogs in key cabinets has rankled Democrat and Republican lawmakers who say the posts are critical to investigate fraud and uncover billions in wasted taxpayer dollars.

Inspectors general (IG) are independent government operators who oversee the efficiency of federal agencies and conduct crucial and sometimes high-profile investigations every year that are reported to Congress for oversight and the Justice Department for prosecution.

Lawmakers are growing impatient with these rare, prolonged vacancies at the Pentagon, State, Interior, Homeland Security and Labor Departments – five of the 14 cabinets with inspector posts appointed by the president. Officials acting as the temporary inspector, in some cases for years, need permanency in order to carry out politically sensitive investigations, lawmakers said.

“We recognize that acting inspectors general and career staff carry on the work of their offices during a vacancy, often ably so,” said the Jan. 24 letter demanding the positions be filled, authored by Sens. Thomas Carper (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and Ranking Member Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and signed by an additional seven Democrats and five Republicans.

“Nevertheless, a sustained absence of permanent leadership is not healthy for any office – particularly one entrusted with as important and challenging a mission as an Office of Inspector General,” the senators said. “Inspectors general occupy a unique role – tasked with speaking truth to power and with dual reporting obligations to their agency head and to Congress. Those unique pressures may be especially challenging for an acting inspector general, serving without the endorsement of presidential selection and Senate confirmation.”

It has been five years since the State Department had a permanent inspector – the entire time Hillary Clinton headed the cabinet and during last year’s terrorist attack in Benghazi and the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Officials within Homeland Security’s IG department were recently investigated for falsifying documents as part of its probe into the smuggling of illegal immigrants and narcotics across the border. An agent in the Texas division recently pled guilty to the charge and will be sentenced in April.

In addition to keeping an eye on the 240,000 employees at the Homeland Security Department, the inspector is also responsible for keeping tabs on the agency’s budget, which totaled $60 billion in 2012. The State Department in 2010 operated on a $27 billion budget with 50,000 employees, and the largest agency, the Defense Department, had a 2010 operating budget of $530 billion for an estimated three million employees.

The Interior Department has been without a permanent IG for four years and acting inspector Mary Kendall is under investigation for conflict of interest charges by the Committee of the Council of Inspectors General for Integrity and Efficiency.

The conflict: Kendall investigated the editing of a report by White House staff that made it appear engineers had endorsed a moratorium on offshore drilling after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster. The seven members from the National Academy of Engineers had not endorsed the ban, which ultimately went into effect, costing thousands of jobs throughout the Gulf Coast region, and created a decline in energy production.

Documents later revealed by the House Natural Resources Committee showed that Kendall actually played a role in developing the report and participated in key meetings.

According to a separate report released last week by the committee titled, “Holding Interior Watchdog Accountable,” the IG office under Kendall has failed to pursue investigations involving political appointees and top Obama administration priorities, overstepped investigative bounds by participating in actual policy roles, and provided misleading and inaccurate information to Congress.

The inspector’s general office was created in 1978 by Congress to act as a politically independent watchdog to dig up cases of fraud, waste and abuse, said Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, in a Feb. 21 letter to Obama. Most notably, it was the IG of the General Services Administration who in 2010 exposed excessive spending for work conferences, including $822,000 for a Las Vegas retreat and a nine-day trip to Hawaii by a top bureaucrat for a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

“Regrettably, Ms. Kendall has not appropriately upheld this standard and it is not appropriate for her to remain in charge of the IG’s office any longer,” Hastings told the president.

Added Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), chairman of the panel’s subcommittee on energy and mineral resources: “Ms. Kendall has bungled and mismanaged a number of critical investigations and has worked collaboratively with political appointees, the very people she is charged with overseeing. The American people deserve a hard-nosed, independent watchdog to protect the integrity of the department.”

http://www.humanevents.com/2013/02/26/obama-has-failed-to-fill-key-government-watchdog-posts/

Shining Light on the Fourth Branch of Government

This week, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will deliver his semiannual testimony before Congress defending his reckless monetary stimulus. He will testify before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee today and the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday. Now is a good time for Republicans to demand more accountability from the fourth branch of government – the one not mentioned in the Constitution.

It is amazing to watch how many Republicans will speak with such conviction against Keynesian fiscal stimulus policies, yet they will fervently promote monetary stimulus policies by the unaccountable Federal Reserve. Their support for near-zero interest rates, quantitative easing, bailouts, and intervention in the housing sector has muddled our message against Obama’s anti-free-market policies. Moreover, in this time of record commodity prices, pro-(monetary) stimulus Republicans preclude us from showing how government intervention on behalf of special interests distorts the markets, depletes savings, and devalues the currency – a winning political argument if there ever was one.

However, even those who place unflinching trust in Ben Bernanke’s economic acumen must agree that there is something fundamentally wrong when one unelected man has so much power without any oversight. How could anyone who respects a representative republic blithely ignore the unlimited power of one unelected individual to grow the Fed balance sheet to over $3 trillion, placing the fate of the entire economy in Bernanke’s ability to prudently unload that balance sheet? Shouldn’t there be some congressional oversight?
Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH), the Chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee on economic growth, believes this to be a fair question. Jordan has sent a letter to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke requesting him to turn over documents detailing how he plans to unload the $3 trillion Fed balance sheet. With the Fed purchasing $40 billion in treasuries and $45 billion in mortgage-backed securities per month, they will need to explain how to unwind without selling these bonds at a loss, contends Jordan.

Congressman Jordan also points out the often forgotten aspect of the monetary stimulus:

Most strikingly, by maintaining low interest rates, the Federal Reserve has distorted the real cost of the national debt, effectively “incentiviz[ing] the U.S. government to borrow and overspend.”

The debacle we face concerning the dependency created by monetary stimulus is eerily similar to the problems with interventionist fiscal policy. Just take a look at the panic over the sequester. When government crowds out the private sector and distorts the market with interventions and subsidies, we are then faced with the “calamity” that would ensue from disengaging from those policies. This is how the statists have successfully dissuaded us from ever limiting government. “You really plan to pull the rug out from under….such and such industry,” bemoans the forces of special interests. There is no reason we should allow the Fed to use monetary stimulus in such an officious manner that the entire economy would collapse without the monetary morphine, yet we incur so many problems from the intervention in the first place.

There is nothing that exemplifies the vices of big-government doctrine and the virtues of free market doctrine than the rising cost and depleting savings of the American people. Republicans need to seize the mantle of free market populism both in the realm of monetary and fiscal policy.

The reason why the statists are so successful is because their policies, which engender the problems they purport to solve in the first place, have the ability to self-perpetuate. They create market distortions and dependency and warn of financial collapse without them. We already tolerate this tyranny from our elected officials; there’s no reason we should put up with it from the unelected politburo at the Federal Reserve.

http://www.redstate.com/2013/02/26/shining-light-on-the-fourth-branch-of-government/

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