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In an effort to remove the hot-potato issue of excessive government spending  from the 2012 presidential campaign, and calling the bluff of congressional  Republicans who always seem to favor domestic spending cuts but increased  military spending, President Obama suggested the concept of “sequester” in late  2011.

His idea was to reduce the rate of increased spending by 2 percent across the  board – on domestic and military spending. To his surprise, the Republicans went  along with this. They did so either because they lacked the political fortitude  and the political will to designate specifically the unconstitutional and  pork-barrel federal spending projects to be cut, or because they thought that  with the debt of the federal government then approaching $15 trillion (it is now  $16.6 trillion and growing), any reductions in spending money the government  doesn’t have are preferred to no reductions. So, instead of enacting a budget,  and instead of recognizing that much of its spending is simply not authorized by  the Constitution, Congress enacted the so-called sequester legislation, and the  president signed it into law.

Nevertheless, even if these sequesters do kick in, the feds will spend  more in 2013 than they spent in 2012. That’s because the sequesters are not  cuts to spending; rather, they are reductions in planned increases in spending.  The reductions amount to about 2 cents for every planned dollar of increased  spending for every federal department.

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The question remains: What part of each federal department (Justice, Defense,  Homeland Security, Agriculture, etc.) will suffer these reduced increases? Here  is where this sequester experiment gets dicey.

The president – who once championed the idea of sequesters and even  threatened to veto any congressional effort to dismantle them – now has decided  he can’t live without that additional 2 percent to spend. So, he has gone about  the country trying to scare the daylights out of people: Prisoners will be  released from federal prisons, soldiers won’t have enough bullets in their  weapons, we will need to endure five-hour waiting lines at the airports, Social  Security checks will be late, and similar nonsense.

If the fears Obama predicts do come to pass, we will have only him to blame.  Remember, the sequesters only cut planned increases in spending. Suppose the  president planned to hire 100 more soldiers for the Army and agents for the TSA  and air traffic controllers for the FAA. Is the president required to hire only  98 of them? Well, under the law, he has a choice. He can hire all 100 and cut  back elsewhere, or he can make do on 98 percent of what he has determined are  the government’s additional needs. But he cannot just intentionally release  prisoners or weaken the military or inflict maddening delays on the flying  public in order to make his fearful warnings come to pass.

His job is to uphold the Constitution, to make the executive branch of the  federal government work. The president has taken an oath to “faithfully execute”  his office. The words of the oath are prescribed in the Constitution. The word  “faithfully” requires him to enforce the laws whether or not he agrees with  them. It also requires him to enforce the laws in such a manner that they make  sense – so that the federal government basically performs the services we have  grown to expect of it.

I know, we have grown to expect more of the federal government than the  founders dreamed, and far more than we can possibly pay for and infinitely more  than the Constitution authorizes. But that’s the good thing about these  sequesters: They will force the president to prioritize.

If he prioritizes so that we stay free and safe, so that the government does  what we basically have paid it to do, he’ll be doing his job and saving us a  tiny bit of cash. But if the president enforces the laws so that they hurt  rather than work well just so he can say “I told you so” rather than “I’ll work  with you,” then he will be inviting his own political misery or even his own  impeachment. And we will have sunk deeper into the abyss of fear, division and  red ink that already engulfs us.