Media Chicken Little cries sequester

Posted by hpayne on February 24, 2013

Henry Payne/The Detroit News

For years Americans have read about billions in government waste like the pork barrel Bridge to Nowhere, taxpayer-funded green companies like Solyndra and Ener1, the V-22 Osprey, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Medicare reimbursement fraud, university grants to fund the development of robo-squirrels, and so on.

Yet as Washington faces a 2 percent of federal spending sequester on March 1, President Obama and his media disciples tell us they can’t find a single program to cut that won’t cripple America.

Politicians do what politicians do to retain power, and President Obama is all politician. But the sequester freak-out is also about a partisan American media that can’t see past White House press releases to the reams of investigative work detailing the federal government’s epic waste.

Take the New York Times  and Detroit Free Press newspapers on your doorstep Sunday warning of Armageddon if Washington cuts a mere $85 billion from its $3.6 trillion budget. Freep Washington bureau reporter Todd Spangler wails that military cutbacks will throw out of work “people with disabilities or other barriers to employment (who operate) call centers for the State Department or sewing cold-weather gear for American soldiers” (remember when military spending was busting the budget?), that harbors won’t get dredged by the Army Corps of Engineers (remember the Corps’ program waste in Iraq?), that the EPA won’t be able to certify emissions standards (remember Washington’s $3 billion in aid to foreign countries to fight global warming?), and on and on. This journalism is cynically calculated to scare readers (the so-called Washington Monument method in which pols protect their pet special interest boondoggles by threatening to maximize voter pain by shutting down public tourist icons).

It is lazy reporting.

And it is a disservice to Americans whose president has put this country in record debt  the last four years, piled up historic 10-percent-of-GDP deficits in peacetime, and provoked a first-ever downgrade in U.S. bonds. More taxes have only fed the addiction with Congress spending $1.17 for every $1 of new revenue according to a Joint Economic Committee study for Congress. NONE of this information is mentioned in the Freep-NYT Chicken Little stories.

The sequester is an opportunity, not a panic. It is a chance to cut fat from an out-of-control Washington spending diet.

 

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