Last Friday, President Barack Obama let Star Wars fans down by mixing Star Wars and Star Trek terminology during his comments regarding sequestration. Obama said he “should somehow do a Jedi mind-meld” to force congressional Republicans to agree to a “fair deal.”

Mind-melds only take place in the Star Trek universe, and the world will not end even though congressional Republicans rejected the Democrats’ deal.

Congressional Republicans opted for sequestration because they oppose the president’s notion that government must target “the well-off and the well-connected” to solve our problems.

Time ran out to avert sequestration last Friday, and the president was forced to order $85 billion in sequestration cuts — as required by the sequestration-mandating Budget Control Act of 2011. In total, sequestration is $1.2 trillion worth of automatic defense and discretionary spending cuts in the next 10 years, according to CNN.

Obama warned sequestration “will hurt our economy and cost us jobs,” and if this is true, the United States is amazingly over-dependent on federal spending because sequestration is insignificant next to the size of the entire federal budget for the next 10 years.

Namely, in terms of all federal spending during the next 10 years, sequestration is not a cut at all; it only slows spending growth. Total federal spending grows each year from 2013 through 2023, even with sequestration, according to Heritage Foundation analysis of Congressional Budget Office data.

Republicans have not endangered the nation by rejecting the Democrats’ deal to free discretionary spending from sequestration limits. In fact, failing to further limit spending will keep the nation on a path of unprecedented debt accumulation.

Additionally, even with the sequestration, sequester-targeted discretionary spending grows year to year starting in 2014, returning to 2013 levels by 2018 and continuing to grow until at least 2021, according to the CBO.

In other words, sequestration cuts discretionary spending once, then immediately allows it to resume growth, and despite cuts due to sequestration, debt grows continuously because sequestration does not balance the budget.

The United States is more threatened by continuous debt accumulation than a momentary drop in discretionary spending. Democrats are concerned with the momentary drop; Republicans are concerned with continuous debt accumulation.

Before signing the sequestration into law in August 2011, Obama said even though he did not prefer sequestration, it would give “each party a strong incentive to get a balanced plan done before the end of next year.”

Senate Democrats did offer a plan that eliminates sequestration cuts, but this plan replaces sequestration with tax hikes and further spending increases, widening the deficit during the next 10 years, according to the CBO.

Obama called this unbalanced plan “a balanced plan,” and congressional Republicans rightfully rejected it because it moves the federal budget further away from balance.

Democrats helped create sequestration, failed to offer a balanced plan but successfully passed the blame onto Republicans. More Americans blame congressional Republicans for sequestration than the president, according to the Pew Research Center/USA Today Poll.

Hence, Obama could quote Emperor Palpatine (the Star Wars character) and say “everything that has transpired has done so according to my design.”

Michael Stikkel is a junior computer engineering major and MBA candidate in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at mcstikke@syr.edu.

Published on March 4, 2013 at 1:46 am