The absolute miracle of the amazing $85 billion that keeps the entire federal government running continues, as Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano explains that we can kiss border security goodbye if we cut government spending by 2.3 percent:
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano warned Monday that her agency would be forced to furlough 5,000 border control agents under mandatory spending cuts, likely allowing more illegal immigrants into the country and potentially compromising national security.
Napolitano said the cuts, known as the sequester, would disrupt the Department of Homeland Security’s ability to conduct customs inspections at ports, leading to increased waiting times for travelers and cargo shipments. Disaster relief funding would be reduced by $1 billion, she added, meaning relief for victims of natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy and tornadoes in Joplin, Mo., and Tuscaloosa, Ala., could be cut.
At the borders, Napolitano said the department would have to scale back patrols between ports of entry in the southwest United States, after years of making progress in stopping people from entering the country illegally from Mexico.
Asked if the cuts would make the country more susceptible to acts of terrorism, Napolitano said: “It’s always a threat. We do what we can to minimize the risk, but the sequester makes it awfully, awfully tough.”
These theatrics make Obama’s government awfully, awfully tough to swallow. A tiny skim of funding that doesn’t take the government more than 20 percent of the way back to 2009 spending levels disables national security? Does anyone remember living through the hell Napolitano describes back in 2009 or 2010?
Of course it’s silly, but the Obamanoids have to play it this way, and not just because they want to take some hostages to squeeze more taxes out of us. If the Administration were to put together the sort of “smart spending cuts” Obama is always talking about, it would make them look ridiculous; the American people would howl in outrage that so much money has been wasted for so long. That’s one of the reasons they’re pretending every last penny of Obama’s bloated spending was frugally invested in tightly-managed agencies, and spending just a tiny bit less would leave America without a military, vital public services, vaccinations for children, disaster relief, or border protection.
It’s high time to turn this around, and start asking how many vaccinations could have been paid for with the $8.4 million in tax credits pumped into Oscar nominee “Django Unchained.” How many border patrol agents could be funded if the Obama family took one less fabulous vacation this year, or the President stayed put in the White House instead of zipping back and forth across America on his permanent campaign? How many troops must be furloughed to fund the continuing billions of dollars of abuse in welfare programs? Instead of reaching into taxpayers’ wallets to fund all this junk, let’s make the Administration choose between hiring another Deputy Assistant Secretary to the Special Assistant to Somebody-or-Other, and funding the crucial duties they’ve been threatening to abandon over sequestration.
