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Editorial: Dear Mr. President
Sequestration alarms are false attempts to justify a spendthrift government
5:58 PM EST, February 25, 2013
Welcome to Newport News, Mr. Obama.
Folks on the Peninsula tend to be straight shooters, so when you visit Newport News Shipbuilding today we sure wish you’d stop your campaigning (you’ve already won re-election, remember?) and honestly answer some questions about the hysteria you’ve fanned over sequestration.
If Sunday’s Daily Press accounts are accurate, the beginning of sequestration at week’s end will be even more catastrophic than if that recent fly-by asteroid had actually hit us.
The Pentagon will be left unarmed, schools will be left without services, air travel will come to a standstill, libraries will be shuttered, seniors will be left without meals, and preschool classes slashed. The average American voter, whose knowledge of either economics or government is based on 30-second TV narratives by well-coiffed anchors, is no doubt scared stiff.
We think you could do us a great service, then, Mr. President, if you explained how all this carnage to our nation could result from cutting a measly 2.3 percent from the budget. That’s right; we’re talking about $85 billion in cuts from a national budget of $3.6 trillion this year.
If such a comparatively insignificant amount will bring our country to a screeching halt, it makes us wonder what our government is doing with the other $3.59 trillion.
For example, it’s hard to imagine the U.S. Navy couldn’t find other ways to cut expenses besides delaying the deployment of the USS Harry S Truman — a decision it has attributed to sequestration cuts. And does anyone seriously think the FAA would cripple the nation by closing down air traffic control towers?
If these sequestration cuts are so dastardly, why did the original proposal emerge from your own White House during 2011’s debt ceiling negotiations? According to news accounts at the time, the main proponent for the idea of sequestration was Jacob J. Lew, then your budget director and now your nominee for Treasury secretary.
And can you please explain why, just a month after reaching an agreement on the debt ceiling that raised income taxes on high earners by another $600 billion, you and your supporters — including Virginia’s own Sen. Tim Kaine — are saying we need to raise taxes again?
Raising taxes is the whole idea, isn’t it?
Your goal in your second administration is to enact your vision of a fairer America by equalizing income levels, which is on its face not an ignoble aim. Where we must disagree is the blunt tool you’ve chosen to implement that goal: a bigger and more intrusive government, funded by increasing taxes on the incomes of those whose investments and risks keep our economy moving.
The problem with that approach, Mr. President, is that eventually you run out of rich people to tax. So you start defining the “rich” downward, and eventually hit the middle class. (For those of you who rely on TV news for your information, just take a look at your paycheck since the payroll taxes came back to their normal levels. This single step, which was overdue, was blamed by national retailers with setting back their business last month).
We suppose that equalizing income levels by making everyone poor and miserable is one way of achieving your aims, Mr. President. But we think our neighbors, like most Americans including you, would prefer to grow our economy so that all could do better.
As President John F. Kennedy famously reminded us in a 1963 speech, “a rising tide lifts all the boats.” He was alluding to the sweeping tax reform and reduction legislation that the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee had recently passed. Mr. Kennedy recognized the role such policy would play in maintaining the nation’s expanding economy and prosperous foreign trade.
Election season is over, but your administration and many in Congress still won’t talk about the sacrifices our federal government must make by reining in spending and taxing more fairly. American families are used to these sacrifices, as are localities and states like Virginia that are trying to make their governments leaner and more efficient.
Like the cuts threatened by some localities who paint a gloomy picture of service cutbacks in order to convince citizens to pay more taxes, sequestration cuts are strategically designed to scare Americans into paying more taxes. We aren’t buying it.
Copyright © 2013, Newport News, Va., Daily Press
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