EDMOND —
It’s not hard to find examples of wasteful government spending. The IRS has its own television studio that costs taxpayers $4 million per year to operate. The National Science Foundation paid seniors $1.2 million to play video games for a study. Just last year, the government shelled out an estimated $115 billion in payments to ineligible individuals. Not to mention the 90 green energy programs across 11 federal agencies that are eating up government resources, according to the Washington Post.
Sequestration does not target any of these outrageous abuses of taxpayer dollars. Although it makes necessary spending cuts, sequestration targets nothing at all. It’s the equivalent of a family deciding to save $1,000 this year by making equal cuts to not only their cable subscription but their heating and grocery bills.
Without legislative intervention, the first installment of the automatic, across-the-board spending cuts known as “sequestration” will go into effect starting Friday. The $85 billion in spending reductions this year will grow to $1.2 trillion over the next decade and apply to all government agencies from the National Park Service to airport security to education.
The sequestration process singles out military spending for extra reductions. Despite representing only one-fifth of federal spending, defense will bear a disproportionate 40 percent of the cuts, leading to real reductions in capability and real hardship to the talented civilian workers who conduct vital maintenance and modernization at places like Tinker Air Force Base. As reported in The Oklahoman, Air Force officials say that 16,000 members of Oklahoma’s Air Force civilian workforce could be furloughed, losing nearly $125 million in pay over six months.
No serious person can deny that government spending is out of control and must be reined in. However, sequestration accomplishes a necessary objective in an unnecessarily blunt manner, jeopardizing the worthwhile alongside the wasteful. There is near universal agreement in Washington that sequestration should be modified. House Republicans strongly support maintaining the full $1.2 trillion in cuts but propose redistributing the reductions in a more purposeful, targeted manner that preserves essential programs and protects the military from dangerous capability cutbacks. In fact, we passed detailed legislation in May and December to distribute the cuts more fairly across the entire budget.
Once again, President Obama has no specific proposal beyond his all-purpose, two-part plan: Blame Republicans and raise taxes. Senate Democrats, who have ignored the issue for almost two years, dutifully introduced a last-minute bill to raise taxes on high earners that is unlikely even to pass in their own chamber.
Solving the sequester by raising taxes is a non-starter for two reasons. First, we have a spending problem, not a revenue problem. Focusing on revenues just kicks the can down the road without addressing the real drivers of our debt. Secondly, the president just got $600 billion in new tax revenue when a portion of the Bush tax cuts expired in January. Now it’s time to tackle the other side of the equation by confronting the 60 percent of the budget consumed by entitlement spending.
For the first time in a long time, Congress is not operating on default settings that favor spenders. Under current law, sequestration is going to happen. Conservatives will work with President Obama to modify the cuts but not to prevent them.
U.S. REP. TOM COLE, R-Moore, represents Oklahoma’s 4th Congressional District.
Opinion
Sequestration should be modified, not canceled
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ROCK DOC: Japanese find a new source of natural gas
The name “natural gas” might be a puzzle. After all, how could there be such a thing as unnatural gas? The reason we call natural gas what we do has to do with history. There was a day that people made burnable gas by heating coal. The gases that came off the coal were piped around cities where they did things like light street lamps and even power cook stoves in homes.
Coal gas had its down side. For one thing, it often contained carbon monoxide. And it took energy to make the gas, so it never could be truly cheap. -
Witnesses missing; Behenna case could be heard at Supreme Court
The film “Breaker Morant” was nominated for an Oscar for the best screenplay in 1980. It told the story of Harry “Breaker” Morant, an Australian who served in the British Army and was court-martialed for alleged war crimes during the Boer War in Southern Africa in the early years of the last century.
That conflict pitted the British Army against the descendants of the Dutch settlers who had migrated to what is now South Africa in the 17th and 18th centuries. The majority of them were farmers and in their language of Afrikaans were known as “Boers.” -
Don’t leave Oklahoma!
May is graduation season. As I have done every year as lieutenant governor, I have given multiple commencement speeches. Advice flows freely during this time and it usually runs the gamut. What to do, what not to do, how to do ‘x’, be sure not to do ‘y.’ Too often commencement speakers speak in big generalities. So general, the message is frequently lost or forgotten.
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Last-minute funding proposals not in state’s best interest
All indications point to this being the last week of this year’s legislative session. The Legislature will go home a week early. This is good news for Oklahomans as not only will there be cost savings but all Oklahomans should breathe a sigh of relief when the Legislature stops making new laws a week ahead of schedule.
As usual, the Legislature will take a number of important votes during the last week. Some will be forced due to attempts to introduce and pass far-reaching, new policies that should have been introduced much earlier in the year. -
BY THE NUMBERS: Oklahoma still needs to invest in its economy
After six months of stagnation, the Oklahoma economy finally appears to be expanding again albeit still weakly. Unfortunately, our leaders aren’t making the investments we need to give our economic prospects a boost.
Last week the Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services reported that in April state General Revenue fund collections were 5.2 percent above the estimate and 14.7 percent higher than last year’s collections. Under normal circumstances, such a report would indicate that the Oklahoma economy was very strong. But this isn’t a normal circumstance, and April isn’t a normal month. -
Americans deserve the truth on Benghazi
Lately, the media has been consumed by the controversies surrounding the White House. Among these controversies is the horrific terrorist attack on the United States’ diplomatic compound in Benghazi that took place Sept. 11, 2012. As more people come forward with additional information regarding the attack on the consulate, many Americans, including myself, are still asking for the truth.
The Obama Administration and the State Department have been less than forthcoming with key information on Benghazi and recent information points toward a major cover-up. -
Seizure of AP phone records insult to independent press
Distrust of government secrecy has been elevated to an exceptional level with the disclosure the Justice Department covertly examined two months of Associated Press phone records to determine who leaked details to the AP about a foiled terrorist plot.
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HEY HINK: Some people just are not cut out for command
Recent headlines cause me to remember an incident that occurred on an army base some years ago. Warning here: I’m taking some liberties with names and details, but the basic outline of events is accurate.
A certain company commander, let’s call him Captain Duntz, had command of a motor pool on a large army base in the continental U.S. -
We’ve become our own worst enemies
The past couple months have been marked by a seeming unprecedented number of man-made tragedies, as distinct from those caused by violent outbursts of the natural world, such as earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis.
You don’t want to dwell too long on the negative, but we do have to take notice of horrific human events and we owe it to ourselves to respond to them in some way. We don’t always agree on those responses, however, and that usually exacerbates the problem. -
Let’s reimburse higher ed for remediation costs
The good news: Oklahoma schools are teaching phonics. The bad news: It’s in college.
Students at Tulsa Community College, for example, can take a college English course called “Spelling and Phonics,” which “helps students master basic spelling literacy, principles of phonics and decoding skills.”
This sort of higher education brings to mind former Boston University president John Silber’s quip: “Higher than what?” - More Opinion Headlines
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ROCK DOC: Japanese find a new source of natural gas
