By Mary Hill
Automatic spending cuts are on the horizon to the tune of $4 trillion dollars. These budget cuts will slow down the recovery of our economy and lead to a new deeper recession. Yet, some Republicans want them to happen. These cuts are not new spending but spending that has already been approved by Congress. Basically, Republicans are refusing to pay bills that Congress ran up in the last budget debates.
Congress is placing the blame on President Obama. Republican Newt Gingrich said on CBS this morning that so much waste exists in the federal government that the sequester has a silver lining. Rand Paul stated to the press that the sequester does not decrease spending enough. He adds that President Obama has shown no leadership on the budget and said he is full of “histrionics” and is exaggerating the impact the cuts will have on the economy.
Republicans are just plain wrong. These cuts are going to impact the pocketbooks of the middle class and damage economic recovery. As writers for the Huffington Post point out the Department of Defense will have to immediately furlough their civilian employees one day per week. These employees will have to work without pay! The damage doesn’t stop there. Huffington Post columnist Sean Crowley adds, “Bottom line: the sequester would cause hundreds of thousands of Americans to lose their jobs, sacrifice the education of millions of children and delay retirement benefits for millions of Americans who can’t afford to wait for them. And that’s just a fraction of the sequester’s economic impacts.”
What are conservative columnists saying about the looming budget cuts? They are blaming everything on Obama and saying he proposed the sequester to begin with. He signed it into law and knew the consequences if a deal could not be reached. They are right too. You can’t deal with unreasonable people who put party before the welfare of the American people.
I believe we need to furlough the Congress. They should not be paid until they pass a budget and real tax reform.
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