You
may have been expecting doomsday if you believed the Obama administration’s
shrill warnings
about what would happen if the federal government underwent a 2 percent budget
cut. But the sequester has taken effect, and the Republic has somehow survived.
Nearly
everyone agrees that the sequester – an idea that originated in
the White House – was not a good way to cut spending, and it has undoubtedly
involved some tough cuts. But when the Democrats demanded yet another tax hike
as their price for replacing the sequester with targeted cuts, any alternative
path was closed.
The
good news is that the Obama administration’s forecasts of sequester doom have
been exposed as empty
hype. America endures – even though numerous Central Valley families with
plans to visit D.C. were disappointed when the President’s office, in a cynical
publicity stunt, cancelled
public tours of the White House and blamed the sequester. (Miraculously,
Congress has found a way to continue offering public tours of the Capitol
building.)
The
bad news is that the sequester doesn’t come close to erasing the federal
government’s trillion-dollar deficits, its $16 trillion national debt, or the
tens of trillions in unfunded liabilities weighing down our entitlement
programs. This debt
bomb will overwhelm the economy unless we begin balancing the budget. When
House Republicans introduce our budget next week, you’ll see our plan to do
that.
Meanwhile,
the Democrat-controlled Senate is also expected to unveil a budget next week –
its first in four years – that will surely include the Democrats’ usual
mix of imaginary spending cuts and real tax hikes.
I
urge you to take a good look at both plans and decide for yourselves which one
is more likely to erase the deficit, make entitlements sustainable, and put
America back on the path to prosperity.
