Sequester: A practical necessity?

In the minds of some people, there should be another name for “sequester,” more along the lines of “senseless budget cuts designed to make people fear budget cuts of any kind.”

But the odd part is that, despite the fear-mongering, it doesn’t seem that across-the-board budget cuts have been all that noticeable or painful to the public at all. 

Sequestration, an idea proposed by the Obama administration and accepted by Congress, involved automatic, across-the-board cuts in domestic discretionary spending and military spending.

The intent was that sequester cuts would be so unacceptably draconian that Congress would take action and make thoughtful, targeted cuts instead. Alas, that turned out to be too much to ask of a divided Congress, particularly a Democratic-controlled Senate that failed to pass a budget of any kind for four years.

Obviously, it would be preferable to have calculated spending cuts, or at least a reduction in the rate of federal spending growth. Americans are fully aware that the bloated federal bureaucracy never shrinks and is riddled with waste, fraud, duplication and all kinds of unnecessary spending.

With an endless stream of news stories about frivolous spending (this week, there was one about more than $400,000 in stimulus funding for a study on correct condom use), it’s not too much to expect Congress to weed some of it out.

But instead, we got sequester and all kinds of howling about how painful it would be to cut some $80 billion this year, which still left the federal government spending more than it did last year.

True enough, it led to undesirable but not end-of-the-world spending cuts in our area. The Air Force’s Thunderbirds were grounded from performing, leading to a cancellation of an air show in the Flathead Valley that was planned for this summer. Ouch. 

It prompted Glacier National Park to cut $682,000 from an already tight budget, leading to a variety of curtailments in employment, services and seasons for campgrounds and park facilities. Couldn’t spending cuts be found somewhere else in the federal leviathan? Maybe. Maybe not. But the park has done an admirable job of prioritizing cuts to be the least disruptive possible.

The sequester also led to closure of the air traffic control tower at Glacier Park International Airport, along with the closure of 148 other towers across the country. In response, our local airport recently sued to stop the closure, alleging that the Federal Aviation Administration’s choices for spending reductions were arbitrary and capricious.

The FAA “did not consider local site-specific operational realities or the impact on nationwide air-traffic operations,” said Cindi Martin, the airport’s director. She will have her day in court to try to prove the allegations, but in the meantime it should be noted that the county airport operated for many years without a tower and we don’t believe it will be dangerous to fly in or out of the airport without one now.

 All of these cuts get attention, but if the intent of bureaucrats and politicians is to convince the public that federal spending cuts are just too much to handle, the American people shouldn’t buy it. 

On the contrary, taxpayers should expect much more in the way of government efficiency through deliberative and meaningful spending reductions in the future. The waste is there, and we know it.

Editorials represent the majority opinion of the Daily Inter Lake’s editorial board.