The Republican mantra has always been to lower taxes and cut spending. Deficits have been the bane of Republicans for a long time, and I am fine with that being part of the political discourse. It is a fair argument to debate in order to try and distill truths from it so that we can get our economic house in order. But despite Republican’s concerns over deficits, for the most part their voices were silent or muted when Reagan and Bush ran up the largest deficits in history up until the current administration. One would think that with deficits in the forefront of Republican Party philosophy, with fiscal responsibility being a major part of their platform, that they would rejoice that we are now undergoing the sequester. After all, we have heard so often that there is so much waste in government that federal spending could easily be cut anywhere from ten percent to twenty-five percent across the board. In Friday’s AJC it was reported that the Republican Senate in Georgia voted to support a congressional resolution that would call for a constitutional convention for the purpose of balancing the budget. Now let’s be serious---if we were to balance the budget anytime soon, the consequences of the sequester would look like a walk in the park on a nice sunny day. This is one of those things known as the curse of the Greek Gods, which reminds us to be careful of what we wish for because it might come true.



Fast forward to March 1st when the sequester kicked in. All of a sudden there are Republicans crying foul. (I am leaving Democrats out of this discussion because they are perceived by the Republicans to be the tax and spend party.) The arguments are all over the place, but for the most part can be boiled down to spending cuts that affect them or people/things close to them. Yet, I recall the cries for across the board cuts, which we got. I recall too the unelected Grover Norquist extracted or extorted from Republican candidates across the fruited plane a pledge that they would never vote to raise taxes. The same Norquist said that his goal was to cut government down to a size where it could be drowned in a bathtub. The sequester cuts are a long way from achieving that startling image, but never was there any Republican voice to challenge Norquist.



Now the best for last. His Porkulous (Rush Limbaugh) has come up with another conspiracy. The man’s imagination knows no limits. In this latest, His Porkulous says that Obama is intentionally inflicting these cuts on America to cause pain so that those feeling it will plead and beg to have the spending restored. And that would allow Obama to tax and spend some more of our money. Evidence for this is lacking in the extreme, but it makes for good programming, deceives the low information voter, and keeps this demagogue’s show going on and on. The bottom line to all of this is that sequestration was a bipartisan agreement that neither House nor Party thought would ever occur. But it did. And I can’t understand why the Republicans aren’t dancing in the streets to proclaim that their prayers were finally answered.