A cartoon published Saturday in The Washington Post, entitled “Sequester Day”, illustrated this slice of the latest bipartisan battle to engulf gridlocked Washington. It featured three vignettes: the sun rising, a sailboat on a calm seas and the Earth staying in orbit.
“Told you,” says an elephant, the symbol of the Republican Party.
“Just wait,” retorts Obama, his arms crossed and looking miffed.
On Friday, hours before signing the cuts into law as he had to, Obama blamed the austerity time bomb on Republicans, who he said refused to close tax loopholes for the rich and corporations, combined with more targeted spending cuts, in his “balanced” approach to deficit reduction.
“I am not a dictator. I’m the president,” Obama said, warning he could not force his Republican foes to “do the right thing,” or make the Secret Service barricade Republicans leaders in a room until a deal is done.
“These cuts will hurt our economy, will cost us jobs and to set it right both sides need to be able to compromise,” Obama said, before decrying the budget trimming as “dumb” and “unnecessary.”
Only three months after winning re-election, and with the extent of his authority in Washington again constrained, Obama bemoaned his inability to do a “Jedi mind-meld” to get Republicans to change their minds, mixing imagery from Star Wars and Star Trek.
The hit to military and domestic spending was never supposed to happen, but was rather a device seen as so punishing that rival lawmakers would be forced to find a better compromise to cut the deficit.
Both sides agree that the sequester is a blunt instrument to cut spending, as it does not distinguish between essential and wasteful programs — in what Obama has branded a “meat-cleaver” approach.
New Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel warned that the sequester could endanger the military’s capacity to conduct its missions.
About The Author
