UTAH TECH UNIVERSITY'S STUDENT NEWS SOURCE | December 01, 2024

Obama’s sequester helps him in long run

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Like it or not, the sequester is upon us and government spending needs to be cut, but the president may have alternative motives than just reducing the budget’s deficit.

Politics is a baffling profession that continues to annoy me—even though it is necessary. On occasion, politicians play with money, programs, initiatives and bills to promote a hidden agenda, at the cost of the general public.   

Obama’s actions have proven to me there are more objectives to this sequester than meets the eye: political seats and legislative power. Let me explain my far right thinking before I give some examples.

Obama’s administration blames everything but itself for the problems this country is enduring. Many of Obama’s initiatives and bills have been shut down or are currently held up because the U.S Senate and House of Representatives have a hard time agreeing on legislation.

This is due to the different parties that control the legislature. Republicans have a majority in the House of Representatives by 32 seats, and the Democrats have a majority in the Senate by eight seats. Imagine what laws Obama’s administration could pass if both the House and Senate were controlled by Democrats.

Obama could be playing his cards to accomplish just that. The plan is to make cuts to areas that affect key voters and then blame the Republicans.  Just look at a few examples of recent cuts.  

Remember, Obama just used more than $900,000 of our taxes to fund his gaudy and luxurious golf tour.

The administration admitted to releasing more than 2,000 illegal immigrants in February and more than 3,000 in March. According to the administration, this was due to budgetary reasons. Minorities continue to be one the most pivotal groups of people in national elections.

According to elections exit polls, Obama won 71 percent of the Hispanic vote in the 2012 election, so he needs to keep improving this number. 

The administration also proposed cutting tuition assistance funding to individuals serving in the military, but Democrats in the Senate saved the day by providing a plan to keep the tuition assistance. According to an Oct. 2, 2012, article published in U.S. News by Elizabeth Flock, the military vote numbers in the 2012 presidential election were the least in the past decades.

The Obama administration could gain a significant advantage in voting if it was able to tap into the military votes.    

Another two cuts are easily visible for the purpose of dramatic effect by the administration. The funding for White House tours has been cut, and funding for the annual White House Easter Egg Roll has been threatened. How much can these programs cost? Certainly an egg hunt doesn’t cost more than $900,000. It’s just another targeting stunt and a way to threaten.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said it best in a Fox News interview on March 6. He said the administration is using the sequester to inflict “maximum pain for political gain.”

In this same interview, Fox News reporter Laura Ingraham quoted an email sent from the United States Department of Agriculture’s budgeting office to an agency region director who had a question about how much latitude he had in making cuts. The email response he got read, “However you manage the reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact will be.”

What sort of impact could this possibly be referring to, and why be so vague about this impact? People use ambiguous wording to hide or mislead those who are not in connection to the referred information. Something sketchy has to be attached to such vague wording.

As I keep researching the Obama administration’s funding cut decisions and details, it becomes more clear there are alternative motives to the madness. Why else would he continue to make long campaign trips? Obama strives at all cost to gain more voters so the Democratic party can win the U.S. Senate in 2014. This would allow him to pass more of his agenda-filled legislation.