He's Sure We're Gullible

President Barack Obama evidently thinks the American public is stupid, or at least very gullible. President Obama gives us a whole laundry list of bad things he says will happen if the sequester he proposed is allowed to take effect. But, as Mona Charen notes,

Even if these “draconian cuts” are implemented, the federal government will spend more this year than it did last year.

That's just another way of saying these "draconian cuts" aren't even cuts — they're just minor reductions in the rate of growth of government spending.

And then there's this:

In 2007, the government was 40 percent smaller than it is today. Were poor people sleeping under bridges? Were the elderly starving? Were planes grounded? Was food unsafe to eat?

I think I agree with this assessment:

The president’s doom-saying is so absurd that a mature country would hoot him off the stage. As it is, the housebroken media credulously report his obviously partisan scare-mongering as fact.

Mark Steyn makes a similar point in saying

Can you pierce the mists of time and go back all the way to the year 2007? Back then, federal spending was 40 percent lower than it is today. In a mere half-decade, has all that 40 percent gravy become so indispensable to the general welfare that not even a teensy-weensy sliver of it can be cut?

It may very well be that, as a number of observers have suggested, President Obama is really worried the sequester brings none of his dire predictions to pass. Then what would he scare us with?