When skies are quiet over the Air Force Academy graduation in May, think about the opulent lifestyles of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden — the men who imposed a careless austerity program on the rest of us.

Air Force Thunderbirds are an annual rite of passage from spring into the spectacular days of summer in the Pikes Peak region. They practice over Colorado Springs and surrounding communities for days, leading up to the traditional flyover and air show after the academy’s spectacular graduation ceremony. Families and neighborhoods organize parties in yards and parks as booming jets pass overhead, performing death-defying maneuvers.

Not this year, thanks to President Obama’s sequestration fiasco.

Let’s remember how we got here. President Obama demanded an increase in the debt ceiling only six years after he lectured us about the evils of doing so.

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure,” then-Sen. Obama said on the Senate floor in 2006. “It is a sign that the U.S. government can’t pay its own bills. … I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.”

He was correct at the time. When Congress gave him the same lecture, as he demanded a higher debt limit, Obama devised sequestration as a tool of compromise. If Congress would let him put our country more in debt, Obama would find a way to cut spending. If the promised cuts did not ensue, sequestration would make them automatically with cuts to most government agencies. Even after persuading Congress to raise taxes, Obama failed to enact promised cuts and sequestration took over.

When politicians and bureaucrats face new fiscal limitations, they want the public to feel it. It’s called the “Washington Monument Strategy,” as federal authorities once threatened to close the monument to tourists because federal parks bureaucrats didn’t get the funding they wanted.

When voters in Colorado Springs declined a tax increase a few years back, city politicians responded by removing garbage cans from parks, shutting off streetlights and allowing weeds to overtake street medians.

By shutting down air shows, government officials save no substantial expense relative to $85 billion that must be cut by order of the sequestration law. It is a cutback that will get the public’s immediate attention and, they hope, make taxpayers realize how much they love government spending. Even layoffs can’t send the powerful message of ending a tradition enjoyed by hundreds of thousands each spring in a city known for limited-government advocacy.

Closing the White House to tourists falls in the same category. When children visit the nation’s capital, their teachers and families will notice the lack of traditional White House access. The money this saves doesn’t amount to peanuts. Entitlements and the growing culture of dependence accounts for most of government’s spending problem. Excessive taxation suffocates production and trade which only hurts government revenue and perpetuates the debt crisis.

But we get it. Government and taxes provide military air shows and other amenities Americans want. If we ask for less spending and more efficiency, they’ll make sure the fun stuff goes away first.

We will take one for the cause and begin summer without the air show. Life will go on. We will keep in our thoughts and prayers those who will genuinely suffer by losing their jobs to incompetence.

While we’re at it, we will keep a watchful eye on the White House — even though we cannot visit. Americans should expect their president, the inventor of sequestration, to embark upon his own symbolic frugality. They should urge cancellation of his family’s summer vacation to Martha’s Vineyard, which would save considerably more than grounding a Thunderbirds show. Americans should request fewer golf outings and trips to Hawaii, as nearly any outing involving Air Fore One costs $1 million and up.

Americans should demand an investigation into the $459,388.65 bill Joe Biden and his staff racked up in one night at Hyatt Regency London last month. Let’s demand answers to the $585,000.50 in taxpayer money spent for Biden and company to stay one night in February at Hotel Intercontinental Paris Le Grand, as reported by the Weekly Standard. Let’s demand they stay in something less than pricey 5-star hotels if we can’t afford air shows and the low-wage workers who are losing their jobs.

We’re all going to feel President Obama’s sequestration, some more than others. If ordinary Americans should take one for the cause, so should the president and other White House officials who advocated this crude tool for a slight reduction in growth of government spending.