![\"Henry](\"http:\/\/blogs.detroitnews.com\/politics\/files\/ChickenLittle.jpg\")
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For years Americans have read about billions\u00a0in government waste<\/a>\u00a0like the pork barrel Bridge to Nowhere, taxpayer-funded green companies\u00a0like Solyndra and Ener1<\/a>, the V-22 Osprey, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Medicare reimbursement fraud, university grants to fund\u00a0the development of robo-squirrels<\/a>, and so on.<\/p>\n Yet as Washington faces a 2 percent of federal spending sequester on March 1, President Obama and his media disciples tell us\u00a0they can\u2019t find a single program to cut that won\u2019t cripple America.<\/i><\/p>\n 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\u2019t see past White House press releases\u00a0to the reams of investigative work detailing the federal government\u2019s epic waste.<\/p>\n Take the\u00a0New York Times<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0and\u00a0Detroit Free Press<\/a>\u00a0newspapers 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 \u201cpeople with disabilities or other barriers to employment (who operate) call centers for the State Department or sewing cold-weather gear for American soldiers\u201d (remember when<\/a>\u00a0military spending was busting the budget?), that harbors won\u2019t get dredged by the Army Corps of Engineers (remember the Corps\u2019\u00a0program waste in Iraq<\/a>?), that the EPA won\u2019t be able to certify emissions standards (remember\u00a0Washington\u2019s $3 billion in aid to foreign countries<\/a>\u00a0to 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).<\/p>\n It is lazy reporting.<\/p>\n And it is a disservice to Americans whose president has put this country in record debt\u00a0 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\u00a0according to a Joint Economic Committee study for Congress<\/a>. NONE of this information is mentioned in the Freep-NYT Chicken Little stories.<\/p>\n The sequester is an opportunity, not a panic. It is a chance to cut fat from an out-of-control Washington spending diet.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For years Americans have read about billions\u00a0in government waste\u00a0like the pork barrel Bridge to Nowhere, taxpayer-funded green companies\u00a0like Solyndra and Ener1, the V-22 Osprey, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Medicare reimbursement fraud, university grants to fund\u00a0the development of robo-squirrels, and so on. Yet as Washington faces a 2 percent of federal spending sequester on March […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,87],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12429"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12429"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12431,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12429\/revisions\/12431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}