Last week, President Barack Obama granted a public appearance with suitable props—emergency medical personnel carefully arrayed behind him as he gave his appearance—wherein he said what he would do if he didn’t get his way on canceling his sequester.

He said he’d fire those very emergency medical personnel, along with cops and firemen, if he didn’t get his precious tax increases.  They’d be the first to go in the spending cuts he’d enact under the sequester.

This is dishonest on two fronts.  For one thing, those folks are paid by local jurisdictions; they’re not Federal employees—they’re not his to fire.

For another, the sequester represents the enormous sum of $85 billion in spending cuts this year, or 5% of the collective budget of his Executive Branch’s non-defense Departments and agencies and 7% of his DoD budget.  The leader of the party of great savings through eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse now is saying he can’t find a trivial 5% of fraud, waste, and abuse in any of his Cabinet Departments or any of his programs.  Or he’s refusing to look.

It’s going to be an ugly four years.