On this weekend’s broadcast of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” Jay Pharaoh played a particularly clueless President Barack Obama who was struggling to understand the sequester.
“Good evening everyone, hello,” Pharaoh’s Obama said. “As you probably know, last night I signed an executive order authorizing $85 billion in budget cuts. Now most Americans don’t understand what this whole sequester means. I could explain it in financial terms or human terms. But since I really have no idea about how money works or how budgets work, I’ll go with human terms instead.”
“You see, we’re all going to feel the pain from these cuts, even in the White House,” Pharaoh’s Obama continued. “From now on, my wife Michelle will only do four television appearances a week, down from her usual 75. I also had to sit Joe Biden down and tell him he couldn’t order another Fathead poster for his bedroom wall. But tonight, I want to show you some of the everyday men and women these cuts are going to affect.”
Among those affected, according the skit, would be teachers, astronauts, air traffic controllers, border patrol, the National Zoo employees and meat inspectors.
“So you see, we all have to make sacrifices,” Pharaoh’s Obama said. “It will be a difficult road ahead. But trust me, nine months from now you won’t remember this sequester ever happened. Why? Because there will be another way worse financial crisis to deal with.”
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