At 11:05 a.m. Central time, on February 19, 2013, President Obama looked into the news cameras and made the first move in the Washington DC Sequestration Chess Game.
He blamed Congress.
The President put the entire threat of massive federal cuts right in the lap of a dysfunctional Congress which has been incapable of working with him to avoid the budget crisis.
The President said:
“Now, if Congress allows this meat-cleaver approach to take place, it will jeopardize our military readiness; it will eviscerate job-creating investments in education and energy and medical research.
It won’t consider whether we’re cutting some bloated program that has outlived its usefulness, or a vital service that Americans depend on every single day.
It doesn’t make those distinctions.
Emergency responders like the ones who are here today -- their ability to help communities respond to and recover from disasters will be degraded.
Border Patrol agents will see their hours reduced. FBI agents will be furloughed.
Federal prosecutors will have to close cases and let criminals go.
Air traffic controllers and airport security will see cutbacks, which mean more delays at airports across the country.
Thousands of teachers and educators will be laid off.
Tens of thousands of parents will have to scramble to find childcare for their kids.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans will lose access to primary care and preventive care like flu vaccinations and cancer screenings.
And already, the threat of these cuts has forced the Navy to delay an aircraft carrier that was supposed to deploy to thePersian Gulf.
And as our military leaders have made clear, changes like this -- not well thought through, not phased in properly -- changes like this affect our ability to respond to threats in unstable parts of the world.
So these cuts are not smart. They are not fair.
They will hurt our economy. They will add hundreds of thousands of Americans to the unemployment rolls. This is not an abstraction -- people will lose their jobs. The unemployment rate might tick up again.”
Gloom and doom! The White House issued to reporters only his remarks. No detailed list of actual programs or agencies to be cut was available from the administration.
So far, no complete or detailed list has surfaced in Washington D.C.as to real impact.
In fact, the entire situation seems to be a repeat of the time President Clinton stared down the Congress back in the 20th Century. Except for one fact, this sequestration is a beast born from both the loins of Republicans as well as the Democrats.
This triggering of cuts was never planned to really happen, due to the understanding that grown men and women of our government would never allow so much pain, suffering, and hurt to be put upon the American people.
If blame is to be assigned, then everyone inWashingtonDCmust share this fault of misreading the needs of the American people.
Shame be upon both political parties and the White House for not fixing this problem last year.
The management practice of using a train wreck as a decision making platform no longer works.
Why must the least among us, the children, the single mothers, the working poor, and the crumbling middle class always be the targets of the rich in Washington DC?
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