Dick Morris "So many of the unattractive parts of the personality and presidency of Barack Obama are evident in how he has handled the sequestration issue —and it’s worth looking at for what it tells us about our president and his administrative style.
"Let’s start with his detachment from the business of government and administration. Confronted with a congressional mandate to cut about $40 billion in spending this year from a total non-defense discretionary budget of about $600 billion, he just ordered across-the-board reductions in proportion to the legislative totals."
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"The bald fact is that the president either could not or did not want to be bothered to spend the time to identify $40 billion of waste, fraud and duplication in a $600 billion budget. It was too much effort for him.
"But then, one wonders why he didn’t just tell his Cabinet secretaries to make the cuts and delegate them to do the research and scouring? Why go with the furlough system for cutting spending? Why not lay off the people we don’t need? If we could get by with 7 percent less work by federal employees, why not just fire 7 percent of them?"
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"And, by refusing to prioritize, he ensured that the sequestration cuts would affect everything, not just the optional areas of federal activity." Read more
"Let’s start with his detachment from the business of government and administration. Confronted with a congressional mandate to cut about $40 billion in spending this year from a total non-defense discretionary budget of about $600 billion, he just ordered across-the-board reductions in proportion to the legislative totals."
....
"The bald fact is that the president either could not or did not want to be bothered to spend the time to identify $40 billion of waste, fraud and duplication in a $600 billion budget. It was too much effort for him.
"But then, one wonders why he didn’t just tell his Cabinet secretaries to make the cuts and delegate them to do the research and scouring? Why go with the furlough system for cutting spending? Why not lay off the people we don’t need? If we could get by with 7 percent less work by federal employees, why not just fire 7 percent of them?"
....
"And, by refusing to prioritize, he ensured that the sequestration cuts would affect everything, not just the optional areas of federal activity." Read more