28 Feb 2013 Project 21 Members Speak Sequester

As the government hovers on the edge of sequestration budget restrictions, members of the Project 21 black leadership network are speaking out about the failure of liberal policymaking that has led us to this point.

Hughey P. Newsome:

While the Obama Administration and Republicans in Congress continue to spar over the pending sequester cuts to federal spending, there is an inevitability that nobody can escape but few seem willing to admit.

The key figures to remember are $85 billion and $845 billion.  First, $85 billion is the projected amount of cuts that the sequester will actually bring this year.  All of the doom and gloom that we are hearing will likely only result in only $85 billion in spending cuts during 2013.  Compare that to the approximately $845 billion projected federal deficit for fiscal year 2013.

Basically, the cuts translate to only a ten percent drop in just the deficit — not the accumulated debt, but the deficit.  In other words, all of this agonizing revolves around us getting tough to only ten percent of our overspending for just this year.

President Obama and other liberal politicians are acting as if such cuts are immoral and can be avoided by making the rich “pay their fair share.”  There is no evidence that a reasonable tax hike on the rich will fix our fiscal problems.  If the government takes 100 percent of what “the rich” earn each year, it will help pay down the deficit but not guarantee no further loss of tax income going forward.  This is especially true considering that “the rich” — or anyone else, for that matter — will not work just to pay taxes.

We also have to face a larger truth.  The bill passed to avoid the fiscal cliff — the same bill that allowed the middle class to avoid a tax hike — kept spending the same for two months and hiked taxes on the rich — and added to the deficit, per the scoring of the Congressional Budget Office.  We have to admit that we cannot, as a society, have as big of a government as liberals seem to want to promise without finding the will to pay for it.

We will ALL have to pay for it in the end.  “The rich” will only be able to provide so much.  Eventually, the house of cards will collapse.

The sad part is that if that house does collapse, the liberals who continually overpromised, under-delivered and exacerbated the problem will already have roads, schools and bridges named after them.

And it will then be up to the rest of us as well as our children and grandchildren to solve the problem.