Sequestration Cuts: 'New Media Victory' After Poll Shows Half Of US Voters See 'No Impact'

The sequestration cuts have been said to be either simple political posturing or unforgiving reductions in the nation's most crucial programs. A new Rasmussen Reports poll shows most Americans, likely when putting aside the media hype, feel little or no effect on their daily lives from the sequester.

President Barack Obama and his administration have followed through on threats to cut crucial services to protect against what he sees as an attack against everyday actions of the government through the sequestration cuts. Air Traffic Controllers are being laid off throughout many airports in the United States. A number of National Parks have seen cuts in their budgets.

A report by BigGovernment, the media organization founded by late journalist Andrew Breitbart, noted the Rasmussen poll revealed that "only 12 percent of Americans feel the sequester cuts have had a major impact on them personally." Tony Lee wrote that despite the constant persuasion by the mainstream media that the sequestration cuts be stopped, many avenues of online "new media" made their arguments for the passage of the cuts in a less prevalent manner.

Lee wrote that in place of sequestration cuts to airports and necessary services, the administration should instead have concentrated on carving out the budgets of head-scratching programs denoted in a bill by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. Coburn's defeated amendment to the Senate's recent spending bill cut and brought attention to Washington's $8 million funding of "wine trains, Elvis cruises and Ukranian Easter Egg workshops," as part of what is called "Heritage Areas."

Lee cited that it was "new media" that put these elective spending pursuits on the map in the wake of such dire warnings by Washington:.

"New media outlets like Breitbart News ... did it by simply reporting where the Obama daughters were vacationing in the context of the White House's attempts to cause panic over the sequester," noting that Obama's children were recently afforded somewhat of a Spring Break in the Bahamas.

Judge Andrew Napolitano noted one truth left out of the discussion of the sequestration. The sequester cuts are indeed a 2 percent reduction on the increase of federal spending, which is not an actual cut in current spending. This revelation has led to meetings of the minds between some strange bedfellows.

Prior to the sequester, the much-embattled New York City mayor took a stand against the perceived alarmism by the White House.

"There's a lot of posturing [going on]: 'I'm going to lay off my employees today unless you do something ... we're going to close hospitals down,'" Mayor Michael Bloomberg, I-NYC, remarked. "Spare me. I live in that world ... let's get serious here."

Analysts like Sean Hannity, who railed against Bloomberg's recent soda ban legislation, have decried on radio and television that the alarmism Americans witnessed was a political stunt by Democrats in Congress and the White House.

"Despite the embarrassing spectacle of closing the White House for tours, it turns out that there are still dozens of White House employees and assistants who earn six-figure salaries," Hannity wrote on his website, retorting that the lead-up to the sequestration cuts was expressed as "[an exhibition of] fear-mongering [that] would spell the apocalyptic doom of America as we know it."

He noted that despite the pessimism of the opponents of the sequestration cuts, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was able to afford $50 million of new uniforms. Additionally, he said, despite the foreseen work stoppage in the annals of government, "[it] will not stop the ... implementation of taxes and fees associated with Obamacare."

A Politico report from March 5, only days after the sequestration cuts were implemented, noted that Wall Street investors had "blow[n] off" the sequester by continuing business as usual. Ben White cited a Dow Jones record of 14,253.77 points demonstrating in-part that "Congress's intractable budget wars can't blow up a recovering U.S. economy."

Probably the most surprising critic of the White House's predictions of the sequester's aftermath was a vocal supporter of President Obama, who accompanied the president to many a campaign stop in the past.

"I think they probably went over the top in terms of saying that the consequences were going to be horrible, especially because ... the world hasn't changed overnight," Former Governor Ed Rendell, D-Pa., told Politico.