When You've Lost George Will.....

From George Will's column this morning:

"The sequester has forced liberals to clarify their conviction that whatever the government’s size is at any moment, it is the bare minimum necessary to forestall intolerable suffering. At his unintentionally hilarious hysteria session Tuesday, Obama said: The sequester’s “meat-cleaver approach” of “severe,” “arbitrary” and “brutal” cuts will “eviscerate” education, energy and medical research spending. “And already, the threat of these cuts has forced the Navy to delay an aircraft carrier that was supposed to deploy to the Persian Gulf.”

“Forced”? The Navy did indeed cite the sequester when delaying deployment of the USS Truman. In the high-stakes pressure campaign against Iran’s nuclear weapons program, U.S. policy has been to have two carriers in nearby waters. Yet the Navy is saying it cannot find cuts to programs or deployments less essential than the Truman deployment. The Navy’s participation in the political campaign to pressure Congress into unraveling the sequester is crude, obvious and shameful, and it should earn the Navy’s budget especially skeptical scrutiny by Congress."

Update:  In response to Bryan Clark's comment, I need to clarify something.  My reason for posting this was not to indicate agreement will Will's position or facts. Rather, I posted it to show the degree to which the sequester debate has alienated someone who is generally speaking, a Navy booster.  That said, Will is largely wrong on the facts and Bryan Clark is largely right.  There simply aren't a lot of options available to implement the sequester's spending cuts in a fraction of a year, which is why OM&N is a big billpayer. 

Bryan McGrath