This just popped up in my FeedDemon this morning, and it brought tears.
Just like this kid, I’m a big Billy Joel fan and dreamed of playing with him; unlike this kid, I never had the balls to ask. Michael Pollack got to live a dream, and I’m jealous as hell—-jealous that he got to play with an idol, and that he can play the piano so well. Also, good on Billy for saying yes…
Notwithstanding the dire warnings from everybody in Washington who said they didn’t want it to happen, but who let it happen anyway, the automatic budget cuts of the sequestration went into effect over the weekend. No big deal? Sure doesn’t seem like it, does it, at least not yet; but Slate has a good FAQs on this for those who want to keep an eye out for the signs of the apocalypse:
Can you start with the basics, like what the heck is the “sequester” and where did it come from?
In short, a sequester is a formal term for mandatory cuts to the federal budget. This particular sequester was originally created back in 2011 when lawmakers struck an eleventh-hour debt-ceiling compromise. In theory, the mere possibility of those cuts was supposed to ensure that Congress’s so-called supercommittee would have no other choice but to strike a deal to trim the federal budget by $1.5 trillion over the next decade. Notice we said in theory. In reality, the panel failed to live up to its super name, and so began the slow march toward today.
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…a trillion dollars? That sounds like a lot.
It is, but it doesn’t happen all at once. The cuts are actually spread out over the next decade. This year’s sequester includes: $42.7 billion in defense cuts (or about an 8 percent reduction); $28.7 billion in domestic discretionary cuts (5 percent); $9.9 billion in Medicare cuts (2 percent); and about $4 billion in other mandatory cuts.
(snip)
The cuts were created in 2011, they went into effect Friday, and the nation will begin to feel the impact in the days that follow. Exactly how soon, we don’t know. But we’ll feel them a little more in the coming weeks, and even more the following month. And even more the month after that. And so on, all the way to either 2021 or whenever Washington decides to replace it with something else.
(snip)
The White House believes that the impact of the cuts over the next several weeks will bring Republicans back to the bargaining table on taxes. The GOP, meanwhile, says that’s not going to happen.
Man, this stuff manages to be both excruciatingly boring and kind of terrifying all at once.
True story. It also may become a little more of both in the coming weeks.
Wait, come again?
The next fight—there’s always a next fight in Washington—will occur over how to keep the federal government running for another year. The current stopgap bill that does that runs through March 27. If and when that expires, we’re looking at one-day-a-week furloughs multiplied by five, for pretty much the entire government. In other words: government shutdown.
Yes indeed: the same people, who more than a year and a half ago planted a booby trap to force themselves to do the right thing but still couldn’t get out of its way, are now less than four weeks away from another self-imposed drop dead date. If they miss this deadline, the government’s spending authority runs out and the lights go out on almost everything.
What could possibly go wrong?
Americans today “are turned off and tuned out of the sequestration mess in Washington. To a person, they are sick of the antics of those to whom they have entrusted enormous power.” So begins David Gergen in his column today, and I can’t find anything in his argument with which to disagree.
The clowns we elected to represent us in Washington—and in many many cases, re-elected…shame on us—have failed to take care of one of the most fundamental things we send them to Washington to do: set a budget for the operation of our government. Actually, as Gergen correctly notes, they have failed to do that one thing for four years running—so far. Back in the summer of 2011 they set a trap to force themselves to act, promising across the board budget cuts at the end of 2012 at such a severe level that it was inconceivable they wouldn’t act to stop them from going into effect; when they still couldn’t beat that deadline they passed a law giving themselves two more months to wrap it up. Well, here we are, two months later, but this time there doesn’t even seem to be the possibility that they can get together to give themselves more time. The ineptitude is astounding!
It’s not unusual to have the legislative and executive branches of government disagree about taxes or spending or any other policy issue; historically, someone on one side or the other finds a way to force a resolution. But as Gergen points out, “we have a rare moment when both Congress and the president are retreating from their responsibilities. It’s hard to recall a time when we were so leaderless.” The Republicans and the Democrats, the president and Congress, everyone is busy running from microphone to microphone insisting that there’s nothing they can do about it. And the whole argument has become so tiresome that even in the face of budget cuts that threaten basic services, things we can all pretty much agree that government should be taking care of, a lot of Americans are just yawning and looking the other way. How many times can the boy cry “wolf” before the villagers ignore the call?
Let’s hope we haven’t thrown in the towel yet, because this sequestration circle jerk isn’t the end of the line: whether these cuts go into effect this Friday or not, there’s a potential government shutdown only four weeks down the road if there’s no agreement on new spending authorization. If we don’t dig up some leadership somewhere, what’s been going around for the last few years is going to come around again and again and again. No winners here, America, not if we aren’t willing to find a compromise that keeps the whole thing from crashing down on our heads.
If President Teddy Roosevelt could sign an immigration law in 1907 that prohibited “idiots, imbeciles, feebleminded persons, epileptics, insane persons” from gaining access to this country, why can’t we establish the same restrictions today to stop them from becoming members of the United States Congress?
