When it comes to sequester, you are being lied to

Besides the fact that the “massive” sequestration cuts add up to only 2 percent of federal spending in fiscal 2012 (look it up), the president is on tour making dramatic claims about job losses, economic stagnation, and generally trying to create mass hysteria to support his wish for more “revenue” (read: your money).

We’ve heard of airport closings, cutbacks in school lunch programs, the release of prisoners from prison (many of them illegals), teacher layoffs, reduction in the TSA leading to four-hour waits at the airport (assumedly the ones still open for business) and a variety of other doomsday scenarios that stop just short of calling for the public executions of puppies because of lack of federal funds.

I’m calling his bluff. To quote Col. Sherman T. Potter from the TV show “M.A.S.H.”, “horse hockey!”

I’d be offended at these blatant lies and attempts to stir public outrage if I wasn’t used to, or expecting, such blatant mistruths from elected officials. It is obvious to every thinking adult that the cuts being proposed as a result of the sequestration are designed specifically to elicit cries of pain from the public. Does anyone really believe that a 2 percent cut (and that’s after an 8 percent increase over 2011 spending) is so drastic as to close airports and prisons?

We all know there are billions in government departments and programs that could be cut permanently tomorrow and none of us would ever notice, or care, that they were gone. But what political purpose would that serve? If cuts were made and you didn’t feel affected, threatened or disadvantaged, it would prove that government isn’t nearly as necessary as it claims to be.

So let the cuts happen, and then cut again and finally we may get down to a government we can actually afford and are willing to pay for.