Some of the most innocent by-standers in this budget debacle, will be the 70,000 preschool students that will be dropped from the Head Start program.
By Blaise Scemama
Congress and President Obama, in attempts to address the ever growing national debt issue, decided to enact a “Budget Control Act”, in August 2011. It was designed to go into effect if legislators could not come to an agreement in regards to the national budget. This bill includes $85 billion in federal spending cuts this fiscal year alone and more than $1 trillion over the next ten years.
Although many people, including the president, originally did not see these cuts as catastrophic, they are beginning to have a very noticeable impact in many key departments and may have steep consequences in the future. Education, food safety, national defense, homeland security, and health research, are some of the more notable departments that are and will continue to be effected by the «sequestration of te budget». It is believed that over 750,000 people are at immediate risk of losing their jobs or being subject to work furloughs.
The Navy for example, has delayed deployment of major warships including the USS Harry S. Truman, and guided-missile cruiser, USS Gettysburg, while furlough notices are being issued to 800,000 defense employees. Along with Defense cuts, the Food and Safety Department may be forced to do a couple thousand less safety inspections, airports across are being forced to close runways all across the nation do to less air traffic controllers on duty, national parks will have to reduce visiting hours, and more than half of federal government workers may lose up to 20 percent of their pay over the next five months.
Some of the most innocent by-standers in this budget debacle, will be the 70,000 preschool students that will be dropped from the Head Start program. Also parents of special needs children will surely feel the effects when the $633 million cut from the Department of Special Education programs goes into effect. College students will also suffer in the way of a $116 million cut from Higher Education, and $86 million from Student Financial Assistance.
In Obama’s weekly address last month, he put the blame on republicans in congress, saying they “decided that protecting special-interest tax breaks for the well off and well connected is more important than protecting our military and middle-class families from these cuts.”
Obama began his speech by saying that,“these cuts are not smart” and that, “congress can turn them off at any time, as soon as both sides are willing to compromise”. House Speaker, and unofficial Republican representative of the issue, John Boehner disagrees. He believes that the problem lies with the Democrats and the President’s unwillingness to revise the sequester with “more responsible” spending cuts, as he states on his Twitter page.
This sequester holds two obvious implications that are very unsettling to the American people. One, that the national debt issue is far from being resolved, and two, that congress is still extremely divided. The sequester is bad for economic growth but more importantly, national morale. House Republicans and Democrats are the ones responsible for deciding the outcome of the sequester but it is mostly the middle to lower class who will be responsible for paying for it.
In attempts to counteract this sobering realization and to restore a bit of national moral in regards to the sequester, President Obama, along with a select few in government, will be giving back 5% of their yearly salary to certain funds effected. This nice but meager gesture softens the blow in a minor way but the fact still remains that the longer the sequester continues, the more damage it will do. All that this small courtesy does for Americans concerned and effected by the sequester, is to prompt us to ask the question, why are so few people in government willing to shoulder the burden, and why are most of the burdens put on the American working class? It’s time for congress to get their act together plain and simple.
