Blaming the Wrong People

The Diamondback here at the University of Maryland published an article from Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) on Thursday, March 7th, 2013, which effectively blamed Republicans for the sequester. He distorted the truth, omitted facts and outright lied to the university community which he claims to represent in Congress. The article can be found here.

The following is a response column I wrote to The Diamondback in an attempt to try and set the record straight. I'll be sending it to them sometime on Friday, March 8th and will update this post if it is actually published. However, considering I've written at least 4 guest columns/letters to The Diamondback in the nearly two years I have been in college without a single one being published, combined with my "lack of credibility" on this issue, I have little reason to believe my response will actually be published. I have also contacted Dr. Andy Harris (R-Md.) in the hopes he will take the time to also write to The Diamondback. I'll keep everyone posted on how my efforts go but in the meantime, allow me to set the record straight on the sequester:

While it is perfectly acceptable for Rep. Steny Hoyer to write an article about sequestration for The Diamondback, it is not okay for him to distort the truth, omit facts and lie to the community he represents about just how the $85 billion reduction in planned spending, known as the sequester, came to be.

In his article Hoyer accused Republicans of repeatedly refusing to bring alternatives to the sequester to the floor of the House. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.

To clear things up and attempt to set the record straight, I’d like to remind everyone that the sequester was all President Obama’s idea. He and he alone owns it. In the summer of 2011, Speaker of the House John Boehner was incredibly close to an agreement on the debt limit with the president. That is until Obama blew that deal up at the last minute by demanding an extra $400 billion in new tax revenue, 50 percent more than the two had agreed on.

With that deal gone, Boehner, along with Senate leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, put together the Budget Control Act which would have saved $917 billion, created a House-Senate “super committee” to find another $1.2 trillion in savings and would have blocked an increase to the debt limit a few months down the road if the committee failed to find the needed savings.

 

Despite bipartisan agreement to this plan in both houses of Congress, Obama blew this deal up as well because he didn’t want to face a debt-limit fight prior to his re-election campaign. His solution was to implement the sequester instead, which was added to the Budget Control Act in place of the debt limit provision and passed by both houses of Congress with just hours remaining before the debt limit was hit.

Following the passage of the Budget Control Act, Republicans repeatedly offered mixes of spending cuts and new revenue through reform of the tax code to no avail as Congressional Democrats and President Obama refused to accept these ideas. Obama even went on public record vowing to veto any Republican plan to stop the sequester. The super committee failed as a result, as did every other plan, and now we as a country find ourselves with the sequester.

And what was Obama’s “balanced alternative” that Hoyer mentioned in his article? Spend, spend and spend some more. The “fiscal cliff” deal ended the 2 percent payroll tax holiday and gave us $41 in new taxes for every $1 in spending cuts. Democratic plans to avoid the sequester called for much of the same; billions in new taxes and almost nothing in cuts.

Was the sequester the best way to cut spending? Far from it. But it was Obama’s idea, not Republicans’, and the blame for sequestration kicking in falls squarely on him, not Republicans. Republicans offered plans to stop this mess from happening. Obama offered campaign speeches and the blame game.

Despite the fear tactics and all the “statistics” employed by the likes of Maxine Waters, Janet Napolitano, Obama, Hoyer and others, the sequester isn’t really going to be that bad. The government can absorb a 2.4 percent spending cut. And the sequester certainly hasn’t stopped the federal government from spending enormous amounts of money, either. Since last Friday the TSA has spent $50 million on new uniforms (over $1,000 per employee), John Kerry has given Egypt $250 million that could’ve been better spent at home and the federal government is still hiring (400 new jobs posted on Monday alone) despite the potential for furloughs of 1000s of other employees.

Look for more posts next week as I head into spring break. I have lots of ideas in the works but the teachers have been pouring it on before we get our week off.

Jimmy Williams