Chicken little......

A sample of headlines on the web this afternoon

 • Napolitano: Cuts will make US more vulnerable to terrorist attack
 • Obama urges budget cuts 'compromise'
 • Armed Services Republicans scramble to avoid defense cuts
 • Navy warns sequester cuts will put off repairs to a dozen warships
 • Obama appeals to governors for help in battle over sequester cuts

Of course every agency is claiming the sky will fall if their budget is cut, and every agency is predicting the direst possible consequences (little children will starve, teachers will be thrown out of work, there will be no air traffic control, terrorists will take over the nation, etc, etc.).

Notice that no one says anything about cutting Congressional staff or reducing Congressional pay, or closing redundant military bases, or furloughing senior civil servants, or reducing the bloated Pentagon support staff, or eliminating special interest subsidies.

Nor does anyone seem to care that we are still borrowing almost half of every dollar the government spends.

Yes, this is a dumb way to reduce our spending. It would be much smarter to ramp it down slowly, and with rational discussion about what the real priorities are. But given today’s politics, the clout that special interest have because of their financial contributions to campaigns, and the natural tenancy of government agencies to fight to preserve all of their budgets and then some, we don’t seem to be able to take the rational route. So better to cut stupidly than not at all.