Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Spending Priorities

In a note sent last week I mentioned that 400 federal job openings were posted on 4 March following the 1 March enactment of sequestration.  The hype by the President and his staff was that all manner of bad things would result due to sequester imposed lay-offs of "vital" government personnel and subsequent declines in public services.  He noted, for instance, that long lines would form in the nation's airports because of TSA personnel shortages and that janitorial services in the Capitol Building would suffer - didn't happen.  The first 10 days since sequestration started saw the announcement of 2200 additional new federal job openings.  As of 11 March the "financially distressed" government had posted a grand total of 2600 new job openings.  It is likely more have been posted since. Despite his warnings of looming funding shortfalls disrupting government services the President, the weekend before sequester hit, was somehow able to find an estimated $1 million to fund his weekend golf outing with Tiger Woods in sunny Florida while Michelle and the kids enjoyed a trip to Colorado (cost not reported).  But once back in the White House he revealed that one of the "dire" consequences of sequester was that the government could no longer afford to conduct citizen tours of the White House.  After you read the below link see if you can with a clear conscience say that the President's pre-sequester hype was credible and that his priorities for spending taxpayer monies are properly ordered.   George Burns

1 comment:

Marry Jones said...

Spending priorities has always been a week side of Obama and his administration and his opponents I guess. If they have not managed to improve things when the situation was not that critical, I am not sure they are going to achieve something today. Now that spending cuts have been established and we are about to experience the whole power of them working against us, the government decided to choose spending priorities. Just about time! Well good luck with that. Maybe I am being a little bit too skeptical, but I really do not see improvements coming any time soon. Judging from my friends and co-workers miserable finance condition…I can say that the only service we can rely on is PaydayLoans@ Company…so sad.