The Economy’s Biggest Problem:
Politicians
Poor kids to go without lunches and vaccinations, meat sold without being inspected, firemen and cops laid off, illegal aliens released from prison, 17,200 teachers fired, airports closed, long lines at airports, and 700,000 workers laid off. Egypt in ferment? Syria at war? Austerity-ridden Greece? Nope. The United States of America as described by President Obama now that the sequester, an across-the-board cut in some domestic and military spending, is in effect.
ll of this pain, says Obama, is being inflicted by those nasty Republicans who refuse to go along with still another tax increase on “the rich” instead of relying completely on spending cuts to make a tiny dent in the on-going deficit. The sequester will take one dollar out of every $100 dollars the government plans to spend in the remaining seven months of the fiscal year. On a full-year basis the reductions will come to $2 out of every $100 of spending. Not much, but better than no cuts at all given that we are borrowing almost $40 out of every $100 we spend, and that even with these cuts, government spending will be more than 7 percent higher than it was when the Obamas moved into the White House.
The pity of all of this is that the cuts in spending could be apportioned more sensibly to mitigate their effect if only an epidemic of bipartisanship would break out in Washington; that it confirms those, here in America and abroad, who believe the U.S. has become ungovernable, caught between a president determined to expand the welfare state and Republicans equally determined to retain more space for private-sector actors; and, and most important, that it diverts attention from what is going on in the real economy.
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