The Little Democrat Who Cried "Wolf"

The Democrats have a tendency to exaggerate when it comes to the consequences of budget cutting. After repeatedly crying "wolf" they're reduced to barricading the WWII memorial and kicking old people out of their homes to make their point.  But we're catching on and it could bode ill for the president if he ever does need to tell us the truth about a looming crisis. We may not believe him.

If the government was shut down, the president assured us that little children will starve, old people will die and all that other stuff the Democrats tell us every time the GOP threatens to cut their budgets.  So far, other than some obviously staged problems, we're all still keeping on with our business.

This happened back in the 90s when Newt Gingrich and the House Republicans shut down the government twice. The Democrats predicted dire consequences. Meanwhile, the Republicans arm-twisted the president and his party into making real concessions and managed to pass 4 consecutive budgets and ended the decade with a 12% budget surplus under an unwilling Democrat president.  The government shutdown wasn't the end of the world and it accomplished a great deal toward kicking the economy into overdrive.

Anybody remember the sequester last year? The seas were supposed to rise, coastal cities inundated, children and grandmothers starved or rolled off cliffs in their wheelchairs, asteroids would rain down upon the earth and bubonic plague would sweep the land because the federal government only got a 1% raise in funding last year instead of 3%. The evil Republicans, we were told, wanted to kill us all, starve old people and run over little children with our power-chairs. 

Well, does anyone remember that we're still under sequestration? We still seem to be rolling along despite the deprivation the federal bureaucracy has had to endure. The Dems even say we're doing better. I thought the economy would collapse if the government didn't go farther into debt to get that 3% increase they were "supposed" to get. Are they saying sequestration helped the economy?

Me, I've gotten to the point I have to put on my hip waders every time this administration makes a speech.

© 2013 by Tom King