The Reign of Pain

Obama’s campaign of pain

“The goal,” The Washington Post reports, “is to flip the Republican-held House back to Democratic control, allowing Obama to push forward with a progressive agenda on gun control, immigration, climate change and the economy during his final two years in office, according to congressional Democrats, strategists and others familiar with Obama’s thinking.”

In other words, Obama is done trying to work with Republicans in 2013 and 2014. He is abandoning any real effort for bipartisan immigration, gun, or energy reform. The bulk of his effort will now be devoted to eliminating all Republican power in Washington.

 So far, so good. Well, not exactly good, but not unexpected.  The goal of any political party is complete victory for their agenda, and if they tell you otherwise, they're being dishonest with someone, most likely you, because they're in a losing position.

And Obama’s first step in that campaign will be to maximize the amount of pain the sequester inflicts on the American people. ABC News reports: “Now that the sequester has gone into effect — bringing on the spending cuts Obama once guaranteed would never happen — the president is in the awkward place of rooting for it be felt as he and his administration has predicted.”

That, on the other hand, if true, would be bad.  The President is elected to represent the whole country's interest, not his own, or his political party's. If it could be documented that the Administration is deliberately increasing the pain and firings in the sequestration for political purpose, it would, IMHO, be grounds for impeachment.  Of course that won't happen.

It's bad enough that Obama and his administration have clearly attempted to exaggerate the effects of the sequestration; this week Obama received 4 Pinochios (out of a possible 5) for his provably false claim that Capital Hill janitors were already being furloughed as a result of the sequester.

And certainly, the President resisted a GOP move to give him more authority over the cuts in the sequester, which he clearly, and probably correctly, perceives as an attempt to pin more of the blame for sequester pain back on the administration:

"some people have been saying, well, maybe we'll just give the President some flexibility. He could make the cuts the way he wants and that way it won't be as damaging. The problem is, when you're cutting $85 billion in seven months, which represents over a 10-percent cut in the defense budget in seven months, there's no smart way to do that... You don't want to have to choose between, let's see, do I close funding for the disabled kid, or the poor kid? Do I close this Navy shipyard or some other one? When you're doing things in a way that's not smart, you can't gloss over the pain and the impact it's going to have on the economy."

And yet, somebody does have to make those calls.  There's not an infinite amount of money available, and by the President's standards, there is infinite need.  Choices need to be made. Why not the head of the Executive Branch?

Instapundit suggest a FOIA campaign to reveal messages between the White House and the various agencies on how to maximize the pain of the sequester in an effort to further his political goals.  I agree.

It's sad when the President's interest lie in the causing pain to his own countrymen:

For perhaps the first time in the history of the United States, it is in the political interest of a president to inflict maximum pain on the American people. Obama could have spent the last 16 months preparing to mitigate sequestration’s impact on the American people, as any responsible manager would have. Instead, he has done the opposite, explicitly ordering government agencies not to prepare for the worst. And he has refused all Republican efforts to pass legislation that would minimize the sequester’s pain.