Sequestration

Those of you readers who have managed to start reading this column after seeing the title must be commended.

Sequestration on its surface may be a sure-fire cure for insomnia, but it is a looming nightmare for American national security. Unless Congress acts, March 1 will trigger cuts in government spending, many of which are overdue. Despite national defense being only 17 percent of the budget, nearly half (43 percent) of the mandated sequestration cuts would come from defense. This would slash the defense budget and jeopardize the U.S. military’s ability to defend the nation.

Entitlement spending is approximately 65 percent of the national budget. Under sequestration it would suffer less than 15 percent of the cuts.

It is obvious that the Obama Administration is only interested in destroying America by weakening its security militarily, ruining it economically by runaway spending on government “giveaways” and destroying the fabric of American morals by Obamacare mandates supplying birth control and abortions, and forcing the military to accept homosexuality.

It is time that patriotic Americans demand more from their political leaders. Every American, like the farmers portrayed in the Super Bowl commercial “God Made a Farmer,” need to defend America’s language, culture, borders and morals. “Let’s roll!”

We are far from a full recovery from the ravages of our Great Recession, but we are threatened with a “cure” that will surely weaken not strengthen us.

Austerity has worked against itself in Ireland, in England, and to the degree that we have limited stimulus, here at home.

We suffer from a lack of demand. The private sector pared jobs due to the financial crisis and government, particularly on the state and local level, did the same. Now, a completely artificial hurdle, sequestration, faces us.

The idea was to set up such an unacceptable consequence for the lack of resolution of our political gridlock that if we didn’t come to agreement on deficit and spending issues by March 1 of this year, we would face such draconian, automatic cuts in defense and social programs that neither Democrats nor Republicans would let it happen.

Instead we hear “bring it on” and “we need to cut our suffocating debt.”

Our debt is not currently our biggest problem. Our weak economy is. It makes no sense to weaken our national security, our social safety net, and our economic well-being for a debt problem that should and can be handled when we are healthy. Let’s get real, listen to the experts, and use common sense.