The Sequester Versus The Baseline : Go Sequester Go!

Reader's Note

Those exploring my list of most popular posts may be pleased to know I've reformatted the post Enemies Of The American Revolution.  A change a few months ago in my blog's appearance had rendered much of it unreadable.  I'd like to add that I had to dig into the HTML to do it for technical reasons I wont bore you with, but be happy to share with anyone who asks.  If I can help a fellow blogger or programmer I am almost always happy about it.

Now for this week I thought I'd point out a couple news items and, of course, add my commentary and questions.

Obama's Sequester

Market Watch reports that Bob Woodward of Watergate fame is once again dogging a president.  In an article entitled Woodward sequester report hangs over Obama as cuts near  it is said that the sequester was President Obama's idea, not the Republicans as Obama has been trying to claim.

This is the sort of thing that tortures my logical mind.  The sequester, for all of its arbitrariness, is the best thing the federal government has managed to achieve in the area of responsible budgeting in decades.   The baseline mistake of the 1970's will finally get touched.

For those unaware of what I mean by the baseline, allow me to explain.  In the 1970's during the Nixon administration legislation was passed establishing that all future budgeting would be done using ten year projections and it would be assumed that all areas of government would receive automatic spending increases of about 6%.  Now consider that inflation is usually 3% so that means government must, according to this legislation, grow at rate twice that of inflation.  Thus it must double in terms of real dollars about once every 24 years.  Doing a little math one can conclude that if the economy grows at the rate of inflation, which it does on average, and government spending started at being  only 10% of the economy, in 240 years it would have doubled 10 times making it about 1000% of the economy.  Now consider government spending hasn't been as low as 10% since the aftermath of WWII and you can see the numbers get worse not better once we leave the realms of estimating.

So baseline budgeting is a very bad mistake we've been living with for way too long and the sequester, if it happens, will be the first time anything has ever been done to even begin to address it.  If Obama wasn't a proven economic dolt he'd be trumpeting his triumph instead of working so hard to hand credit for it to the Republicans.

Of course, given Obama's expressed determination to spend us into oblivion, giving Obama credit for the good side of the sequester would be like making a quarterback who throws an interception to the winning team the MVP.  So no matter how we turn this story to look at it, it still seems to torture my sense of logic.  The best we can say is, the sequester is a good thing but not enough (it doesn't even cut the baseline increase in half), and President Obama was stupid in proposing it, not because it was a bad thing but because he thought it was a bad thing.

A good question to ask here is how do we get to places like this in our public thought?  How do we get to a point where we are asking who to blame for a good thing that is only bad for not being enough and not being administered more smoothly?

Boehner's Quandry

Real Clear Politics offers us a comment from Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin where he's asked if he thinks Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner will make a deal with President Obama to avoid sequestration.  Johnson is quoted as saying, "I don't quite honestly believe that Speaker Boehner would be speaker if that happens. I think he would lose his speakership".

Well it will certainly be telling what this Speaker does or doesn't do.  I for one believe that if he's so distracted by the anti-logical spin that passes for public rationale right now that he would consider any deal to avoid sequester that doesn't do at least as much to address the problem of the baseline, he should lose his speakership.

Now I almost feel as if I haven't been fair to the Speaker here since if one looks at the entire interview in which Senator Johnson said that you could easily get the impression that Johnson doesn't believe Speaker Boehner is even considering such a deal and he made the quoted statement as a way to emphasize the strength of that belief, not as a threat to the Speaker.

But then I suppose that sort of misquoting is what has to be done by a media that is caught up in the anti-logical spin that is passing for public rationale.  That brings us back to the questions, doesn't it.

How do we get to a place like this in our public thought?  How do we get to a point where we suspect the Republican Speaker of the House may wish to avoid a good thing that is only bad for not being enough and not being administered more smoothly, even at the cost of worse policy?  Is perception really so much everything that we can get twisted that far?