If You’re A Taxpayer, You’re With Stupid

If President Barack Obama, the Republican House and the Democratic Senate cannot cut $85 billion from this year’s $3.8 trillion budget without laying off first responders, tying up airport security lines and furloughing food safety inspectors, what good are they?
The answer is: Not much. It turns out we elect lawmakers so they can hold our time and safety hostage. When Congress passed and the president signed the 2011 Budget Control Act, all parties agreed that the act’s $1.2 trillion in “sequester” cuts over 10 years would be so terrible that a bipartisan supercommittee would be forced to present a better plan for deficit reduction.

But the committee failed. The “sequester” cuts were designed to be too terrible for taxpayers, but not for Washington insiders embroiled in the blame game.

You see, the 2011 budget act didn’t simply mandate $85 billion in cuts this year — $46 billion from the Pentagon, $39 billion in discretionary spending. The law also required that the cuts be administered under an across-the-board formula that imposes cuts, as one White House aide put it, “at a granular level.” The Department of Agriculture cannot decide to balance its books simply by cutting farm subsidies or other forms of corporate welfare. No, the cuts have to shave every agency account.

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