It’s been just under a full 24 hours since the sequester cuts have been signed into law, and armageddon has yet to take place.
Speaking of which, there are two major points to take away from all of the fear mongering that has gone on in Washington in recent days leading up to the sequester:
1.) So many bureaucrats have screamed that the sky will fall over these cuts, that millions will lose their jobs, that scientific research will come to a halt and medical advances will slow, that education will suffer, and that vital services for women, children, the needy, poor, and sick will be cut, leaving them with nowhere to turn. Recall during the 2012 presidential campaign when Mitt Romney infamously stated that “47%” (although I’d argue that was a gross underestimation) of the people are dependent upon government in some way, he received quite a backlash. So this leaves me to wonder, is all this ranting and raving about the millions of people being affected by these minuscule cuts finally an admission, at least implicitly, that America does indeed have a dependency problem? If such a small percentage of government spending affects so many people, then the problem isn’t the cutting, it’s the fact that government has intertwined itself into the lives of so many people in the first place! Ayn Rand once said in an interview that "In a proper society, a rational man doesn't have to know the government exists, because the laws are clear and he never breaks them." But in an improper society, one like our current United States, government is in your home, in your pocket, in your food, in your face at nearly every minute of your life. That list of things above that will be affected by sequestration, it’s amazing these bureaucrats never stop and ask themselves why the government has to be in control of those things at all.
2.) Then there are those who are warning that our economy will be thrown back into recession over this approximate 2.4% cut in spending. If that is true, if our economy does slip back into recession over such a cut, only one thing can be concluded: the economy was never actually in a recovery to begin with and was being artificially propped up by government expansion. If a real recovery is to take place, not this stagnation nation we’ve become, government needs to begin reducing its entanglement and scope in the private lives of citizens who are of no physical harm to others or their property so that real economic growth can occur.
With that said, although the sequester isn’t the best plan set forth to curb spending and reign in our government, it seems this is the only way to actually do it, although truth be told, it actually isn’t even a reduction in spending, it’s a reduction in the growth of spending, a minor rollback of the clock by a few minutes or so. But hey, it’s a start.
