Why the scare tactics from the White House?

There are no cuts; it only slows down the spending. The 2012 federal budget was 3.53 trillion. The projected 2013 (by  CBO)  federal budget (WITH SEQUESTER)  is 3.55 trillion;  2014,  3.6 trillion;  2015,  3.8 trillion;  2016,  over 4 trillion.  So you see, he got his tax hikes and the GOP got no cuts.

Mr. Obama, you are an embarrassment.

There's no doubt President Obama is using the so-called Washington Monument maneuver in the fight with Republicans over sequestration budget cuts. It's a time-honored tactic of bureaucratic warfare: When faced with cuts, pick the best-known and most revered symbol of government and threaten to shut it down. Close the Washington Monument and say, "See? This is what happens when you cut the budget." Meanwhile, all sorts of other eminently cuttable government expenditures go untouched.

So now Obama is warning of drastic cuts in food safety, air traffic control, police and fire protection -- in all sorts of services that will allegedly be slashed if the rate of growth of some parts of the federal budget is slowed.

But perhaps the biggest example of the Washington Monument maneuver is coming from the Defense Department, where it goes by another name. Over many decades of defense budget battles, the Pentagon has often used a tactic known as a "gold watch." It means to answer a budget cut proposal by selecting for elimination a program so important and valued -- a gold watch -- that Pentagon chiefs know political leaders will restore funding rather than go through with the cut.

Byron York