Ya gotta love the sequester.
One thing you learn early in this business is that the rare
occasion when something good comes out of Washington it is always
for the wrong reason. In a classic Seinfeld episode, a
store manager politely tells Jerry that company protocol does not
list “spite” as a valid basis for returning an item. In government,
however, spite ranks high on the validity scale, alongside
resentment, one-upmanship, egotism, greed and general
nastiness.
If the sequester occurs on March 1, a consummation devoutly to
be wished, it will be for one reason only. When President Obama
derisively, haughtily, sneeringly, mockingly said in an election
debate the sequester is “not going to happen,” a bunch of guys with
the power to make it happen said to their TVs, “Oh, yeah?”
Make no mistake. There are plenty of good, decent folks in
Congress who understand that government must be trimmed to save
itself and to save us, and see this quest advanced by the automatic
cuts due to be enacted March 1. However, that caucus does not have
nearly the votes needed to take up that stand and make it stand up.
It will not be the “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!” of Supreme Court
judiciousness that carries the day; it will be the “Oh, yeah? Oh,
yeah? Oh, yeah?” spite of the guys who didn’t enjoy being dissed
and dismissed in the debate.
That being said, ya gotta love the sequester. Finally there is
an instrument, however imperfectly honed, to hack some fat off the
morbidly obese federal budget. Not that the cuts will actually be
cuts; they are only decreases in the projected increases of
budgets, which are only “cuts” in the Orwellian language of
Washingtonspeak. Not that the cuts will actually stick; you can be
sure some later bill will slip all the money back into the system
quietly. Still, the mere fact that the rapacious ripoff racket that
is government spending will miss a snack or two gives hope to
honest people everywhere who pull their own weight and provide real
products to real people.
That is not to say the millions of people in government offices
do not work hard; all you have to do is to walk into one of their
on-site gyms to see them sweating and breathing heavily. Nor should
we disparage their work product. My personal favorite is the Manure
Management Planner (MMP) of the United States Department of
Agriculture (USDA). This is part of the Comprehensive Nutrient
Management Plan (CNMP) which is required of farmers with
Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs.)
In the immortal words of the USDA guidelines:
CNMP planners are strongly encouraged to use Manure Management
Planner (MMP) because it was designed to simplify and hasten the
CNMP development process. MMP was developed on a state-by-state
basis to include each state’s unique data and
circumstances…
Clearly, these vital functions must be spared the budget
cutter’s ax. (As a public service, we include a
link to the MMP.) No matter how many people we are forced to
lay off in an effort to refurbish our financial house, we must make
sure the fearless men of Manure Management receive their full
complement of Pooper Scoopers. The image of a bunch of cows eating
together at the CAFO Braunerhof in Vienna or the CAFO De Flore in
Paris without a proper MMP is too scary to contemplate, although I
understand Mel Brooks has bought the film rights.
Sadly, the phonies who run these departments usually cut the
most vital parts first to try to win popular sympathy. Ronald
Reagan raised that point 33 years ago in the Presidential debate
when he cited the old politicians’ trick to cut the firefighters
and the hospitals first. There is plenty of room to achieve the
necessary savings without affecting vital services.
The final irony comes from the sideshow over whose idea all this
was to begin with. Bob Woodward says it was Obama and Obama says it
was the Republicans. Truth is Obama could have scored a big win in
historical terms by standing proudly behind this idea and adding:
“I expect the heads of each department to exercise maximum
discretion and restraint in targeting the cuts to the least vital
areas.” Who would have criticized him for that? He would only have
earned accolades.
Instead of the accolades Obama spoke to the acolytes and the
Kool-Aid drinkers. He wooed the wards of the state and fought
Woodward. Too bad, because we could sure use some manure management
in Washington, D.C.
