Sequester Fall Out

What exactly is Sequester? "It’s a package of automatic spending cuts that’s part of the Budget Control Act (BCA), which was passed in August 2011. The cuts, which are projected to total $1.2 trillion, are scheduled to begin in 2013 and end in 2021, evenly divided over the nine-year period. The cuts are also evenly split between defense spending — with spending on wars exempt — and discretionary domestic spending, which exempts most spending on entitlements like Social Security and Medicaid, as the Bipartisan Policy Center explains. The total cuts for 2013 will be $109 billion."(http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/09/14/the-sequester-explained/)

Today, a friend of mine, who is a veteran, found out that because of the sequester in Washington, he was going to lose it all. His income, his health insurance and his home. They denied his disability for disability that was received while in the military. Totally unacceptable!  Is this the way we treat our Veterans who served our country and put their life on the line?

My son was not allowed to reenlist in the Marines. They disbanded his Battalion. It was the oldest Battalion in this country. This is unacceptable. They are having to cut another 8,000 Marines. The Marine Corps plans to reduce the size of the active-duty corps to about 182,000 as part of overall reductions in defense spending. It is about 194,000 now, down from a peak of more than 200,000. The Army announces Tuesday that it was eliminating 12 Brigade combat teams as it shrinks the size of the services to 490,00- soldiers by 2017, down from a wartime high of 570,00.  Again, is this they way we treat our Veterans who served our country and put their life on the line?
(http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/26/commandant-amos-helmand-afghanistan-odierno/2460619/)

Locally a senior center not far from me quit transporting patients to needed medical appointments because their funding was cut because of the sequester. This is unacceptable.  Is this the death camp idea circulating already starting? Some of these seniors will die without medication, dialysis, breathing treatments, etc.  Is this how we treat the people who helped to build roads, buildings, planes, etc., and helped our economy grow?

Personally myself and many others I know that are on unemployment are losing $320 a month in Missouri through September all because of the sequester. This is unacceptable. I cannot live on $900 a month and pay bills. I do not get those funds back. They are deducted from my total income allowed by unemployment. So I did not get the money but I lose it completely. Is this how you treat those of us who cannot find a job because the economy is so bad?

According to CNN Money the worst is yet to come. "The blunt, across-the-board cuts to government spending designed to deliver an austerity blast fell out of mind for most Americans back in April when Congress patched FAA funding to stave off an impending air travel nightmare. Planes kept taking off, more or less on time, and the broader predictions of economic cataclysm failed to materialize.

But the program is wreaking quiet havoc by boring into all sorts of other critical federal programs -- clinical trials for cancer patients, Head Start help for low-income kids, in-home assistance for seniors, Western fire-prevention efforts, the post-Benghazi push to beef up embassy security, not to mention cuts to unemployment benefits, housing programs, public defenders, national parks, and on and on. The changes have been relatively small and diffuse enough to stay off the front pages, especially as the nation enjoys unexpectedly brisk economic growth.

That may be about to change. The first sequester cuts that could rattle the recovery are due to start hitting next week, as the Pentagon begins furloughing roughly 650,000 of its civilian employees across the country without pay for up to 11-day stretches, through September. Measuring any ripple effects from all those unpaid vacations could be tricky, since sequestration choked off funding for the Mass Layoff Statistics program, which the federal government uses to track and explain what happened whenever a company fires more than 50 people at a time."  (http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2013/06/26/sequester-spending/)

This is just the cuts scheduled for 2013:

The 2013 sequester includes:

$42.7 billion in defense cuts (a 7.9 percent cut).

$28.7 billion in domestic discretionary cuts (a 5.3 percent cut).

$9.9 billion in Medicare cuts (a 2 percent cut).

$4 billion in other mandatory cuts (a 5.8 percent cut to nondefense programs, and a 7.8 percent cut to mandatory defense programs).

The cuts are only going to get worse of the next 8 years. Cuts to social security means cuts for the elderly and disabled. Medicare which all of us who have ever had a job paid into is going to have cuts.  

While I applauded President Obama for giving up a months paycheck at the time to show his support of the Air Traffic Controllers losing their jobs and closing of control towers, his giving himself a raise recently was unacceptable. If he can have his raise and congress can have their raise,  I can have my unemployment. My friend can keep his benefits and the seniors can get their rides.

Without those clinical trials for cancer drugs, I would not be alive. Many will die without those trials. While I agree many will die even with the trials because they are on placebos, the point is, without funding research moves out of this country and overseas which takes jobs.

"The last few years have seen a remarkable number of American companies moving overseas, resulting in the loss of many jobs in the US economy. While manufacturing companies have taken their operations overseas for decades, the trend is now happening in the service industry.

The spate of U.S. companies moving overseas has been given subtle terms including the most famous one, "overseas outsourcing." A majority of economists has wished away the worry of a grand negative effect to the overall economy but some have been more cautious in their sentiments.

The U.S. economy depends largely on consumer spending. The increasing numbers of unemployed have meant that employed persons are fast surrendering the clout required to demand pay raises. With lower wages, the masses have less to spend, and this low spending power becomes counterproductive for consumer spending. There is a healthy reason for concern, therefore, even as the exodus of American companies overseas continues."
(http://www.ehow.com/about_6403114_american-companies-moving-overseas.html)
Wake up! Those people you elected and re-elected every year have caused this problem. Special interest groups have caused this problem. We cannot drill for our own oil without some group getting up in arms. We have the largest oil deposit on our own soil. Why let OPEC control our gas prices? We can control our own.

Depression is defined as: A period of drastic decline in a national or international economy, characterized by decreasing business activity, falling prices, and unemployment.

It is time to remove every member of Congress and put people in there that care what we are doing to the people of our country. Can it be fixed over night? No. But we have to start somewhere.