This time, the graph shows the sequester as compared to the President’s 2013 budget (total from the chart on page 205 of the pdf).

Doesn’t seem like that big a slice of the pie, does it? Yet to hear the Democrats talk about it, you’d think that cut was the end of the world as we know it.

Hate to break it to you leftists, but a 2% reduction in the rate of growth (from 7% to 5%) is not going to destroy America, your beloved government, or the world as we know it. It’s just not.

And when America wakes up after the sequester kicks in and nothing has really changed in their day-to-day life, you who have been screaming “wolf!” at the tops of your lungs will look like the scaremongers you are.

I just hope America is smart enough to remember that when you fearmongering Democrats stand for re-election.

Here’s the raw numbers, for those number geeks who want to play with them themselves:

Spending by year, in billions of dollars (data from Government Printing Office)

And the sequester, according to House Democrats (question 3 on the FAQ), is $110 billion, evenly split between defense and non-defense cuts, $55 billion from each.

Kinda makes all the sturm und drang from the Democrats seem a little overblown, doesn’t it?

Mike over at Make An Effort wrote something today I wish I had.

I just heard with my own ears an attempt at moral relativism that should shock and disgust every individual in the Untied States.

Chuck Todd, while asking the President why he was not using the 14th Amendment to unilaterally raise the Debt Ceiling, attempted to equate the irresponsible spending with the Emancipation Proclamation… “it had to be done when congress would not act…”.

So spending money we do not have in morally equivalent to individual freedom?

Do these Leftists have no shame?

Therefore… being responsible with our money while admitting that we have spent ourselves into oblivion and must CUT of spending in order to remain solvent is equal to, what?  Slavery?  Indentured Servitude?

I would argue that continuing to spend money that we do not have is enslaving everyone and those not yet born to those who are loaning us 40% of every dollar being spent.

Exactly.

By continuing the rampant spending, our government is sentencing every American alive today and quite possibly the next generation — depending on when the crash happens — to a vain attempt to pay this debt off.

We’re also condemning future generations to a far worse quality of life, as the economy is on a Greece-like crash course, and rampant economic hardship always follows such a crash. In our case it will be that much worse, because there’s no one around to bail us out.

If the Republicans had any backbone, they’d say point-blank, no more debt limit increases, period. Unfortunately, with Boehner at the head, I doubt that the House GOP will have the spine. As I’ve said previously, Boehner’s spine resembles a Slinky® a lot more than it does a steel rod.

The Washington Post reports (emphasis mine):

As Obama prepared to deliver remarks about the “fiscal cliff” at the White House, negotiators for the administration and McConnell (R-Ky.) appeared to have nailed down many of the most critical tax issues, including a plan to let taxes rise on income over $450,000 a year for couples and $400,000 a year for individuals, according to people in both parties familiar with the talks.

You’ll remember about a month ago Brent Bozell sent GOP Congresscritters and the RNC a letter declaring that he would not support the party if they caved on taxes, and the same would go for any individual Congressperson who voted for it. I agreed with him there, and I agree with him now. If this deal goes through, the GOP will be getting zero of my hard-earned dollars — in perpetuity! — nor will any person that supports or votes for this bill, nor will any organization that supports any Congresscritter that votes for this.

Oh, and it’s not just taxes… the spending cuts are being deferred… which may be good, but more likely means there will be no cuts at all.

Instead of delaying the cuts for two years, at a cost of more than $200 billion, Republicans suggested delaying the sequester for three months — at a cost of $33 billion, according to people close to the talks. It was unclear Monday whether the hang-up was the brevity of the extension or the need to identify offsetting spending cuts.

We’ve heard this tune before. “Give us tax increases now, and we’ll do the spending cuts later.” And somehow, the spending cuts never come, because the GOP lacks the backbone to hold the Democrats’ feet to the fire on them. Reminds me a lot of Wimpy’s eternal promise to pay us Tuesday for a hamburger today.

The problem is, Tuesday is here. Without real spending cuts, America is spending its way into a Greece-like future. And McConnell and the rest of the GOP is happy to help the Democrats take us there.

According to The Hill, the Democrats are now demanding that the reforms to entitlements be taken off the negotiating table.

Senate Democratic leaders signaled Tuesday they would not agree to any entitlement reforms before the end of the year that cut spending on Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries.

They also said that any year-end deal to avoid the expiration of tax cuts and implementation of spending cuts — known as the fiscal cliff — must include a provision to raise the debt ceiling, which would otherwise have to be addressed early next year.

The White House and Reid have indicated they will not consider cuts to Social Security, a notable change from 2011, when President Obama said “everything is on the table,” including entitlement programs dear to his party’s base.

Never mind that even New York Times columnists agree that the growth of entitlements is unsustainable, the Party of the Donkey would rather keep the bread and circuses going as long as possible, rather than avert disaster.

Yesterday, Keith Hennessey argued that Obama is bluffing in the fiscal cliff negotiations, that he wouldn’t let the country slide into a recession. Whether that is correct or not — and I have serious doubts that it is — the Democrats in the Senate don’t seem to be on the same page.

Could they be following the Cloward-Piven strategy? That would explain why the Democrats want to continue the current entitlement regime, as a way to completely destroy the American economy.

This is what you voted for, both those who voted for Obama and those who sat home. I sure hope you’re happy with what you’re getting.

According to the Washington Times, Obama’s Labor Department has spent close to a half a million taxpayer dollars — that’s your money and mine — on MSNBC ads praising the President’s policies:

Spending reports under the federal Recovery Act show $495,000 paid to McNeely Pigott & Fox Public Relations LLC, which the Labor Department hired to raise awareness “among employers and influencers about the [Job Corps] program’s existing and new training initiatives in high growth and environmentally friendly career areas” as well as spreading the word to prospective Job Corps enrollees.

The firm ultimately negotiated ad buys for “two approved spots” airing 14 times per week for two months on “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” and “The Rachel Maddow Show,” according to a project report, which listed the number zero under a section of the report asking how many jobs had been created through the stimulus contract.

David Williams, president of the nonprofit watchdog Taxpayers Protection Alliance, called the contract “questionable” because it created no jobs and because of the placement of the ads on shows viewed as friendly to the administration’s policies.

“Hiring a PR firm does not create jobs, and this was obviously meant for selling a particular political agenda,” Mr. Williams said. “The placement really reeks of a political ad rather than a job ad, and taxpayers see through this.

“Taxpayers would be a lot happier at the end of the day to see a completed road rather than a bunch of ads on cable television,” he said.

The public relations firm did not respond to inquiries from The Times about who directed the ads to appear on MSNBC, but Labor Department officials defended the expenditures, saying the decision to place the ads on the network — now NBC News — had nothing to do with politics.

Sure, politics had nothing to do with putting the ads on the most favorable network to the Administration, and not putting them on a network that’s less friendly, like Fox News, or even Fox Business. Heck, even CNBC would have been a more logical choice to reach employers — if that was their true intent — than MSNBC.

And apparently no one at the DOL looked at this and said, “waitaminnit, we’re gonna be running these ads on a network that’s really pro-Obama… won’t this look a little suspicious?” Or if they did, they got shot down by the brass.

This entire Administration is being run by incompetents.

USA Today has the ugly numbers:

As Election Day approaches, President Obama is burning through campaign money faster than he can collect it — exceeding his spending pace at this stage of the 2008 contest as he expands his field operation and trades combative ads on the airwaves with Republican rival Mitt Romney.

Last month alone, Obama spent nearly $59 million through his main campaign account — $10 million more than he raised, financial reports filed late Monday afternoon show. The cost of his campaign so far: more than $325 million, not counting spending by the the Democratic Party committees aiding his re-election.

By contrast, President Bush had spent $205.4 million to retain the White House at this point in the 2004 election.

Part of this is likely because his fundraising is lagging what he experienced in 2008, but a smart person — and apparently there aren’t any of these in the leadership of the Obama campaign — would reduce spending to levels commensurate with fundraising; i.e. don’t spend what you don’t have.

However, Obama’s — and the Democrats’ — policy has always been to spend far more than they have. Yes, the Republicans have done their share of that too, but that doesn’t absolve the Democrats of their label as high spenders, especially the way Obama has ramped up spending far above Bush’s profligate levels.

All in all, this is not a good sign for the Obama campaign. If he gets into real money problem in the latter parts of the campaign, will he be forced into not running ads in the last weeks? Of course, a friendly media would help, but lately the media hasn’t been as friendly as they have in the past, so I’m not sure it’s wise of the Obamacrats to depend on them.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Andrew Coulson opines:

Since 1970, the public school workforce has roughly doubled—to 6.4 million from 3.3 million—and two-thirds of those new hires are teachers or teachers’ aides. Over the same period, enrollment rose by a tepid 8.5%. Employment has thus grown 11 times faster than enrollment. If we returned to the student-to-staff ratio of 1970, American taxpayers would save about $210 billion annually in personnel costs.

[snip]

To find out if that’s true, we can look at the “long-term trends” of 17-year-olds on the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress. These tests, first administered four decades ago, show stagnation in reading and math and a decline in science. Scores for black and Hispanic students have improved somewhat, but the scores of white students (still the majority) are flat overall, and large demographic gaps persist. Graduation rates have also stagnated or fallen. So a doubling in staff size and more than a doubling in cost have done little to improve academic outcomes.

We are told by the left that all we really need to do to boost test scores is reduce class size (i.e. hire more teachers) and spend more. Clearly, Coulson’s analysis shows that hasn’t worked, or else we’d be leading the world in math and science scores — which we clearly aren’t.

Perhaps the time has come to try something different in education, like, for example, rewarding teachers on the basis of performance rather than tenure, and many other conservative reforms that have been suggested.

But don’t expect the NEA to accept those changes quietly; in fact, expect them to squeal like stuck pigs.

Rasmussen’s latest poll has some interesting findings:

Voters are much more convinced that taxes and spending will go up if President Obama is reelected and Democrats regain control of Congress than if Republicans win in November. But they’re not so sure the GOP will cut taxes and spending if it’s in charge.

Fifty-one percent (51%) of Likely U.S. Voters think taxes will go up if Obama is returned to the White House and Democrats take over Congress, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Just 31% expect taxes to go up if Mitt Romney is elected and Republicans take control of the House and Senate. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Similarly, 52% of voters predict that government spending will rise if Democrats control both the White House and Congress, compared to 27% who expect spending hikes with a GOP takeover.

That’s the bad news for Obama, especially when considered in combination with this:

Most voters as they have in regular surveys for years believe tax cuts are good for the economy and that more government spending has a negative impact.

In other words, voters are pretty sure that Obama will continue policies that are hurting the economy, which can’t be good for his re-election.

On the other hand, they’re not convinced Romney would be any better.

But just 24% think taxes will be cut if Romney is elected in November and Republicans are in charge of Congress, while 36% believe they will stay about the same. Of course, if Democrats sweep the elections, just eight percent (8%) expect taxes to go down, and 32% think they’ll stay about the same.

When it comes to government spending, 41% think it’ll be cut if the GOP is in charge.  Twenty-four percent (24%) expect it to stay the same. If Obama’s reelected and Democrats run Congress, only 12% feel spending will go down, while 29% say it will stay about the same.

If the Romney campaign has any smarts at all, they’ll see this as an opportunity to assure the voters that yes, they will cut taxes and spending. If they do it well, they might just lock in the end of the Obama era. And the way the Obama campaign has been stumbling, they might just think that painting Romney as a spending cutter would help their campaign, when this poll makes it look like it would really help Romney.

The 2013 Homeland Security appropriations bill would increase one-way fees for passengers from $2.50 to $5 in order to close a budget shortfall at the Transportation Security Administration.

Of course, the Democrats couldn’t find a single penny of waste in the TSA they thought worthy of cutting, so instead they want to charge passengers for the privilege of having a stranger put their hands in places strangers don’t normally touch.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said the $350 million in funding would otherwise come from taxpayers and argued it is better to stick passengers who rely on TSA with the bill.

Again, are they asking us to believe that there is no waste that could be cut before increasing fees? Given the recent GSA and Ninth Circuit junkets, I’d say it’s likely there’s plenty to be cut. Perhaps not the full $350 million, but it would make the fee increase go down a lot better if they at least tried cutting waste before jacking up fees.