The spending cut that wasn’t

  • by:
  • 09/21/2022

Anyone familiar with decoding Washington-speak knows that while sequestration is routinely described as a spending cut (usually with adjectives such as “harsh,” “deep,” or the ever-popular “draconian” attached) it’s not really a “cut” at all.  It’s a reduction in the rate of spending growth.  The government will still spend more money after sequestration, which doesn’t even put much of a dent in the overall spending increases since 2008, let alone the size of government as a whole.

But even though the government continue to grow, certain individual agencies and programs will see  actual cuts.  The White House Office of Management and Budget long ago prepared a list of them.  For example, there’s the National Drug Intelligence Agency, which is losing $2 million out of a $20 million budget.

A 10 percent reduction might not really be “draconian,” but it’ll certainly be felt in the halls of the National Drug Intelligence Agency!  Or at least it would… if the agency had not ceased to exist, three months before the OMB report was prepared in September 2012, according to Mike Riggs at Reason.

So President Obama is galloping around the country and insisting that an overall 2.3 percent trim will prove fatal to a $3.6 trillion government that can’t even keep track of which agencies are still in business.  No surprises there.  This is the same Leviathan State that subsidizes pizza advertising at the same time it’s spending millions to hector Americans about the fat in their diets.  And those were two different initiatives of the same agency.

Follow-up question: does anyone know where the money budgeted for the moribund National Drug Intelligence Agency is actually going?  Depending on whether or not sequestration goes through, that’s either $20 or $18 million that we taxpayers would like refunded.

Image:
ADVERTISEMENT

Opinion

View All

DOOMCOCK: 'Gamergate 2' is an attempt to stop the woke assassination of our childhood heroes

It’s open season on straight white males in Hollywood, in Silicon Valley, in literature and comics, i...

MONICA CROWLEY: Ronna McDaniel's firing shows the media are tyrannical lunatics

The sanctimonious performative outrage by prominent anchors Chuck Todd, Joy Reid, Rachel Maddow, Chri...

'White supremacy' trigger warnings slapped on Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland by UK university

York St John University warned readers that the historical children's stories are likely to contain "...

'Girls' soccer team with FIVE trans players destroys team of actual girls 10-0 in Australia

Flying Batts FC won the pre-season Beryl Ackroyd Cup in Sydney, during which they won every game they...