Gene Sperling, the director of President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, interacted with the public on Reddit last Thursday.

One redditor asked Sperling to name the “largest factor hampering the economy right now.” Sperling responded, “One of the biggest factors holding us back is the refusal of Republicans in Congress to meet the president halfway on a plan to replace the sequester.”

Sperling wants Republicans to move halfway toward nothing. Obama does not have a sequester-avoidance plan; he has a list of vague goals.

Specifically, Obama has a one-page list of broadly defined government areas and dollar amounts that supposedly represent potential savings for each area.

In total, Obama’s document lists six reduction areas and savings goals under “Health savings,” five under “Non-health” and two under “defense and nondefense.”

For example, one listed goal under the heading “Health savings” says, “Reduce payments to drug companies” by $140 billion, and nothing more regarding that item. This $140 billion payment reduction to drug companies is an end without a method for achieving it.

Suppose this five-word goal was handed to government health care agencies. Bureaucrats would adopt the president’s goal to reduce drug-purchasing costs by $140 billion. Given no direction from the president regarding how to accomplish this goal, the planning would start at these agencies.

A plan is “a method for achieving an end,” according to Merriam-Webster. Obama’s document is all ends and no methods. Hence, the president has not produced a plan.

At very most, the president has produced a list of goals that require planning to achieve. It would be more accurate for Sperling to say: “Republicans in Congress need to help us make a budget plan that meets the president’s goals because we have not made it yet.”

Obama’s list of goals is not a plan because it leaves the planning up to other people.

The Congressional Budget Office cannot score five words; we cannot pass five words as a bill in Congress. Obama has stated desired outcomes, but a plan to reach them he has not provided.

The Senate Democrats did, however, produce the sequester-avoiding American Family Economic Protection Act of 2013, which the CBO scored. It should be called the American Family Indebtedness Act, because it would add billions to the deficit, according to the CBO.

During the Republican presidential primary, GOP primary candidate Herman Cain said, “I am going to only allow small bills — three pages.”

Jon Stewart, mocking Cain, said, “If I am president, treaties will have to fit on the back of a cereal box… the State of the Union address will be delivered in the form of a fortune cookie. I am Herman Cain, and I do not like to read.”

Obama’s sequester-avoidance “plan” fits on the back of a cereal box; his five-word budgetary goals fit in fortune cookies.

Someone tell Stewart not to let this comedic material go to waste.

Michael Stikkel is a junior computer engineering major and MBA candidate in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at [email protected].

Published on March 18, 2013 at 2:39 am