The media hyperventilation over minor budget cuts as a result of sequestration knows no bounds.
On the Martin Bashir show Thursday, MSNBC political strategist Jonathan Alter actually said that people might die as a result (video follows with transcript and commentary):
JONATHAN ALTER: Let's just broaden the conversation out from Head Start a little bit because these cuts go all the way across everything that the federal government does. So people can have a particular problem maybe with Head Start. Maybe it doesn't have the results they want. Anybody can find various problems with various government programs. But to take a machete to the federal budget this way is mindless.
Pretty much all of these agencies could close some programs, consolidate programs, save some money. Obama's for that. Democrats are for that. But to just kind of say that arbitrarily everything has to be cut, what ends up happening is, look at these people on dialysis. They get rides to their kidney dialysis programs. If they don't get there for their dialysis treatment, they can die. These rides have been dramatically cut back in some areas because of these cuts.
Multiply that by thousands of programs and different things the federal government is involved with - whether it's small business, Head Start, or anything else - the only people spared are those who serve the powerful like airlines because Congressmen have to fly home. They don't want the delays at the airport. So they fixed that and they left the poor and the sick to fend for themselves. And that's immoral in the United States.
"They can die...They left the poor and the sick to fend for themselves."
Is there no limit to what these folks will say to prevent any trimming of a budget that even with sequestration is still 28 percent greater than 2008?
Yes, that's a rhetorical question.
