A Head Start Program in Fayetteville, Ark. recently announced they will have to close the children’s daycare center 13 days earlier than expected due to budget cuts, according to huffingtonpost.com. The program is required to cut $150,000 from its operating budget by the end of September, which in turn puts over 300 children without a daycare for two weeks. Why is there the need to cut this kind of money from a program designed to benefit learning and safety for children? These kinds of budget cuts are spreading rapidly throughout the nation, ranging from a reduction of scholarships given to the children of Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans, to the closure of 149 air-traffic control towers for smaller airports, according to Forbes. It’s all due to the Sequestration Act that was initiated March 1. The act was originally initiated by Congress to break the debt stalemate in 2011, and although there’s a fine line of who’s to blame that it passed — the president or Congress — it turns out, it’s both.
Simply put, sequestration is a procedure dealing with the reduction of the federal government’s budget deficit, according to Auburn University’s “Glossary of Political Economy Terms.” Congress lays down an annual Budget Resolution, in order to limit government spending. If the bills Congress passed that year exceed this limit, and if Congress cannot agree on a way to cut back the total, then sequestration takes place. Sequestration is an automatic spending cut when the government finds itself spending too much.
It is supposed to be for the benefit of the country and to keep Congress in check. So then why is everyone getting so upset about it? In theory, this is supposed to cut every agency an equal percentage of money. Congress, however, has decided to exempt certain programs like Social Security, which has caused some serious damage to the budget cuts for the agencies left, according to Auburn’s Glossary.
John Greene, author of The New York Times best-selling book “The Fault in Our Stars,” gives a little perspective. He says that when this sequestration was created, it was essentially a “ticking time-bomb,” originally proposed by President Obama. When the time came for the sequestration to take place, there would be automatic cuts of $1.2 trillion over the course of 10 years. Yet again, here is where Congress made a stupid mistake. Half of these cuts were going to be placed on defense and half to other spending, but almost no cuts were made to the mandatory spending programs that were actually the center of the long-term fiscal problem in the first place. Greene gives the example, “It’s like you had a doctor tell you that you had a slow-growing tumor in your fingernail, and you responded by saying quick! Remove my gallbladder!”
Now we see the problem, and the reason for outrage all over the U.S. The larger, (and some would say more important) mandatory spending programs are exempt from these budget cuts: Medicaid, VA Pension, Social Security, Civil Service Retirement and all of the programs administered by the department of Veterans Affairs, according to Richard Habiger from The Business Journal. So while these programs still continue to rake in money, random things like White House tours, Marine Air Shows and even NASA’s educational and public outreach programs are being virtually eliminated.
USA Today reported that the GOP-led House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released a video on March 20, criticizing the White House cancellation of tours because of the sequester, with the title, “No Leadership, No Responsibility, No Tours.” The video displays Obama playing basketball, and running with his dog, supposedly while he should be working on the country’s financial problems. Many Republicans are claiming that the White House is choosing to cut back the Secret Service personnel needed to monitor tourists in the White House so they don’t “get in the way” of all of Obama’s hard work. After watching the video, it is indeed negatively biased, and kind of a waste of time, but the idea behind it stands out. Why on earth would the government choose to cancel something as small as White House tours, and in such a public form?
Here’s what it all comes down to: initially I believed that the congressional deadlock, that Republicans seem to continue even now, was to blame for these cuts. Going back to the supposed Fiscal Cliff crisis in February however, I discovered something else. During this time, President Obama was madly campaigning that Republicans were to blame for all budget cuts, and was calling for a compromise on their part. However, Obama was not willing to compromise himself, and then began suggesting sequestration. This was all a political move. He knew that the Republicans would not be able to accept this sequester proposal after the tax raises that they had just enacted, and in turn he would then win their submission. This proposal was nothing but a scare tactic, put in place to gain support from the public. In February, he claimed that sequestration would be the ultimate downfall of the country, and that if Congress couldn’t agree with him, then this scary proposal would have to take place. Well now it has.
The sad part is that Obama didn’t really believe it would happen. He used this proposal as a political move, rather than a concern for the well-being of the country. He’s made his bed, and now refuses to lay in it. Now that his own idea actually took place, he’s trying to direct all of the blame at Congress. He is even going so far as punishing the American people in order to prove his point.
Canceling the White House tours was one of the first things Obama cut, publicly telling America that this was the result of Congress’s Sequestration Act. Our cherished American landmark is now off-limits to the public. People are now at risk of layoffs, pay-cuts and incredible inconveniences. America is pointing fingers at Congress for not coming to a one-sided agreement on the part of our president. Sequestration is wreaking havoc all across the country. Congress is to blame for dividing these budget cuts unequally and causing discriminatory cuts to take place on smaller programs and Obama is to blame for proposing this idea in the first place.
Lauren Richey can be reached at lauren.richey@spartans.ut.edu