Obama’s False Alarms

by
Andrew P. Napolitano

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by Andrew P. Napolitano: Benedict
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In an effort
to remove the hot-potato issue of excessive government spending
from the 2012 presidential campaign, and calling the bluff of congressional
Republicans who always seem to favor domestic spending cuts but
increased military spending, President Obama suggested the concept
of “sequester” in late 2011.

His idea was
to reduce the rate of increased spending by 2 percent across the
board – on domestic and military spending. To his surprise, the
Republicans went along with this. They did so either because they
lacked the political fortitude and the political will to designate
specifically the unconstitutional and pork barrel federal spending
projects to be cut, or because they thought that with the debt of
the federal government then approaching $15 trillion (it is now
$16.6 trillion and growing), any reductions in spending money the
government doesn’t have are preferred to no reductions. So, instead
of enacting a budget, and instead of recognizing that much of its
spending is simply not authorized by the Constitution, Congress
enacted the so-called sequester legislation, and the president signed
it into law.

The reductions
the sequesters require are reductions in the rate of increased spending
from those originally planned by Obama and authorized by Congress.
Since the federal government has not had a budget in four years,
even though federal law requires it to have one every year, these
are planned expenditures, not budgetary items, on which the president
wants to spend more money. Congress does not feel bound to obey
the laws it has written; hence it has disregarded the legal requirement
of a budget. Without a budget, the president has great leeway as
to how to allocate funds within each department of the executive
branch of the federal government.

Nevertheless,
even if these sequesters do kick in, the feds will spend more in
2013 than they spent in 2012. That’s because the sequesters
are not cuts to spending; rather, they are reductions in planned
increases in spending. The reductions amount to about two cents
for every planned dollar of increased spending for every federal
department.

The question
remains: What part of each federal department (Justice, Defense,
Homeland Security, Agriculture, etc.) will suffer these reduced
increases? Here is where this sequester experiment gets dicey.

The president
– who once championed the idea of sequesters and even threatened
to veto any congressional effort to dismantle them – now has decided
he can’t live without that additional 2 percent to spend. So, he
has gone about the country trying to scare the daylights out of
people: Prisoners will be released from federal prisons, soldiers
won’t have enough bullets in their weapons, we will need to endure
five-hour waiting lines at the airports, Social Security checks
will be late, and similar nonsense.

If the fears
Obama predicts do come to pass, we will have only him to blame.
Remember, the sequesters only cut planned increases in spending.
Suppose the president planned to hire 100 more soldiers for the
Army and agents for the TSA and air traffic controllers for the
FAA. Is the president required to hire only 98 of them? Well, under
the law, he has a choice. He can hire all 100 and cut back elsewhere,
or he can make do on 98 percent of what he has determined are the
government’s additional needs. But he cannot just intentionally
release prisoners or weaken the military or inflict maddening delays
on the flying public in order to make his fearful warnings come
to pass.

His job is
to uphold the Constitution, to make the executive branch of the
federal government work. The president has taken an oath to “faithfully
execute” his office. The words of the oath are prescribed in
the Constitution. The word “faithfully” requires him to
enforce the laws whether or not he agrees with them. It also requires
him to enforce the laws in such a manner that they make sense –
so that the federal government basically performs the services we
have grown to expect of it.

I know, we
have grown to expect more of the federal government than the Founders
dreamed, and far more than we can possibly pay for, and infinitely
more than the Constitution authorizes. But that’s the good thing
about these sequesters: They will force the president to prioritize.

If he prioritizes
so that we stay free and safe, so that the government does what
we basically have paid it to do, he’ll be doing his job and saving
us a tiny bit of cash. But if the president enforces the laws so
that they hurt rather than work well just so he can say “I
told you so” rather than “I’ll work with you,” then
he will be inviting his own political misery or even his own impeachment.
And we will have sunk deeper into the abyss of fear, division and
red ink that already engulfs us.

Reprinted
with the author’s permission.

February 28, 2013

Andrew P.
Napolitano [send
him mail], a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey,
is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano
has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent
is Theodore
and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional
Freedom. To find out more about Judge Napolitano and to read
features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit
creators.com.

Copyright
© 2013 Andrew P. Napolitano

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