St. Cloud Times: Letter: Better ways exist than Obama's sequester

By Michele Bachmann

If your family had enough money in your monthly budget to either pay your mortgage or take an expensive vacation to an exotic location, common sense tells you to pay the mortgage.

Yet when it comes to sequestration, President Barack Obama wants to take the exotic vacation. Which begs the question: Why does the president want to cut essentials rather than nonessentials?

One of Obama’s proposed cuts could potentially shut down the air traffic control tower at St. Cloud Regional Airport. Instead we should be cutting wasteful and ineffective government programs. Here are a few, for starters:

• Government spent $2.2 billion in 2013 to give away free cellphones.
• Government spent $1.7 billion in 2010 to maintain properties that are rarely used, if at all.
• The IRS spends $4 million a year on a full-service TV production studio.

Sequestration amounts to $85 billion in savings from this year’s $3.6 trillion federal budget – about a 2.4 percent reduction. While I certainly agree we need to balance our budget, it must be done in a smart way that sets priorities, not in an arbitrary way.

I voted against sequestration and had the foresight from the beginning to realize Obama’s sequestration idea was unwise. The House already has passed two bills to replace sequestration with more responsible savings.

Rather than working on a solution to legislation that was his idea, Obama has been having campaign-style events across the county threatening to cut teachers, transportation and other essential services.

It’s time to work together to prioritize our spending and cut wasteful programs that do not work.

This letter to the editor originally appeared in the St. Cloud Times on March 2, 2013.