Sequester Cuts Beyond the Air Controllers

Congress and a lot of other folk are now all happy because the sequester cuts to pay air controllers has been handled by letting them use money that was set aside. Or, in other words, once again they didn’t solve a problem just kicked the can down the road again.

The sequester was passed as part of the Budget Control Act of 2011 (read debt ceiling compromise.). It was meant to give the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (the Supercommittee) a kick in the pants to cut 1.5 trillion over 10 years. As though we needed to adopt an austerity program that has proven not to work in other countries. It would have been better to work on a stimulus budget; but I digress.

Anyhow, the kick in the pants didn’t work. The sequester was never supposed to take place. But it did in 2013. Had it been put in place with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts we would have had another recession, so they pushed it back to March 1.

But there is much more to the sequester than just the airlines. See the following graph for what gets cut evenly split between domestic and defense programs.

Yet some programs were protected. See the breakdown below.

There is your $85.4 billion in cuts. More is to come in 2014. Here is a list of programs to be cut:

§  Aircraft purchases by the Air Force and Navy are cut by $3.5 billion.

§  Military operations across the services are cut by about $13.5 billion.

§  Military research is cut by $6.3 billion.

§  The National Institutes of Health get cut by $1.6 billion.

§  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are cut by about $323 million.

§  Border security is cut by about $581 million.

§  Immigration enforcement is cut by about $323 million.

§  Airport security is cut by about $323 million.

§  Head Start gets cut by $406 million, kicking 70,000 kids out of the program.

§  FEMA’s disaster relief budget is cut by $375 million.

§  Public housing support is cut by about $1.94 billion.

§  The FDA is cut by $206 million.

§  NASA gets cut by $970 million.

§  Special education is cut by $840 million.

§  The Energy Department’s program for securing our nukes is cut by $650 million.

§  The National Science Foundation gets cut by about $388 million.

§  The FBI gets cut by $480 million.

§  The federal prison system gets cut by $355 million.

§  State Department diplomatic functions are cut by $650 million.

§  Global health programs are cut by $433 million; the Millenium Challenge Corp. sees a $46 million cut, and USAID a cut of about $291 million.

§  The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is cut by $55 million.

§  The SEC is cut by $75.6 million.

§  The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is cut by $2.6 million.

§  The Library of Congress is cut by $31 million.

§  The Patent and Trademark office is cut by $156 million.

For a more detailed account of all this go to here. 

What is the most interest to me is the nature of the work of congress. Congress is supposed to be comprised of public servants doing those things that will benefit our citizens the most. Now I know that folk will vary on how that should take place, but it is a common agenda for which they should be pulling together to accomplish. 

But that does not seem to be the case of modern public servants. They seem to believe that there are just supposed to win against their opponents as well explained in the book "Winner Take All Politics" by Pierson and Hacker that I have written about previously. It is a competitive model versus a synergistic model where working together you can accomplish far more than working in competition with each other.

But current forms of capitalism seem to work entirely counter to that with big money having far more influence on the work of politicians than the good of the people. I read recently (look here) where 93% of politicians win who spend the most money. That is not public service that is a plutocracy in action.

To date I see two members of congress, though I am sure there are more that seem to understand that concept. They are Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Baldwin. Both can be tough but they do it without shouting bombastic rhetoric, but instead question folk to get at the real issues. They seem to be truly working for a more transparent government but they face a real uphill battle. Though I picked these examples that happen to be democrats, if I was more informed I think I could find a couple of Republicans as well and would encourage folk to search them out and name them. Frankly I think that John Boehner could be one of them, but has allowed his hands to be tied by hardline members of his party. I feel Obama is caught in the same dilemma in trying to work with others has given up far too much that is in the public interest.

I see the sequester issue as just symptomatic of a much larger issue of governance.