Bring on the Cleaver

President Obama has gone into full “blame Republicans”/”the sky is falling”-mode over the sequester. Via USA Today:

President Obama warned Tuesday about the “brutal” consequences of $85 billion in “meat cleaver” budget cuts set to take effect March 1

Brutal? How brutal?

Obama said the looming “sequester” of $85 billion would weaken national defense, disaster response, health care, education, energy development, medical research, border security, FBI investigations, federal prosecutions, air traffic control and airport security.

Obama is making the sequester sound like the most awful event imaginable. Who could possibly come up with something such a disastrous plan? Oh, right.

Anyway, the White House has clearly started to prepare for the possible scenario that the sequester might actually take place. If it does, Obama and the Democrats want to make sure that all of the blame for it will fall on Republicans. That’s why Obama has turned to a rhetoric that is close to ”the children will starve and the homeless will die in the streets”. It’s an emotional appeal that Democrats turn to time after time.

A rather different picture emerges if one looks beyond Obama’s rhetoric. For example, the CBO estimates that total federal spending for 2013 will be around $3.6 Trillion. On average, the federal government will spend $9.7 Billion per day. Some quick math tells us that $85 Billion isn’t even enough to run the federal government for ten days.

Let’s put all of this in another perspective. In 2000, President Clinton submitted a budget that requested somewhere between $1.7 and $1.8 Trillion in expenditures. The spending for 2013 is twice that amount, and Obama wants the American people to believe that education, health care, and airport security will all but be destroyed by cutting a meager $85 Billion.

Don’t fall for it. Bring on the “cleaver”.