Sequestration, Budget Cuts

 "General Consensus Seems To Be: Sequestration Will Indeed Be Harmful" by v. johns, 3-2-13, 9:42 PM

The graphic to the right of this column is a White House graphic illustrating some of the potential effects of the sequester, which was allowed by the petty 113th Congress, featuring House Speaker John Boehner and Eric Cantor, to be signed into law on Friday, March 1 (2013). I say “allowed” because the sequester was designed to be repulsive enough to inspire the nominal degree of cooperation necessary to have passed a better, more sensible law (#FAIL).

According to President Obama: “The whole design of these arbitrary cuts was to make them so unattractive and unappealing that Democrats and Republicans would actually get together and find a good compromise of sensible cuts as well as closing tax loopholes and so forth. And so this was all designed to say we can't do these bad cuts; let’s do something smarter. That was the whole point of this so-called sequestration."

I think it’s safe to opine that allowing sequestration to be signed into law this past Friday was nothing short of a political stunt (a potentially harmful one at that) to benefit the political images of the Congressional Republicans who are up for election in 2014. Our upcoming frustration and suffering, the result of the repeal of sequestration being ruled out of the question, for now, will help all these conservative-cred-thirsty Republicans look like they’re just really taking it to President Obama. Furthermore, they all realize that there’s still time to repeal this stupid law. So, even some Democrats might not have been as eager to repeal the law on Friday as they should have been. 

Regardless of what anyone’s particular political slant might be, the general consensus outside Washington seems, to me, to be that budget sequestration will be harmful. Furthermore, it’s just common sense to see that anytime you take money away from someone (teachers, firefighters, students, the elderly, etc.) there will be some degree of suffering.

Even though these harmful cuts to the budget have passed to become law, there’s still time to either repeal the law directly or pass legislation to stop its senselessly hurtful outcomes. We’re all a bit Johnny-come-lately on this issue, most of us, but it won’t hurt at all for us to contact our elected representatives and business leaders so as to mount as much pressure from the public on this issue as possible.