What’s up, sequester baby?

What’s up? It’s a two-word question we often use like a knee-jerk response to a stimulus, such as a phone call from someone we have not heard from in a while, or a convenient way to strike up a conversation as you jump into a discussion between or among friends. But for a really short expression, “What’s up?” packs in a lot of possibilities for a good exchange, a half-hearted banter, serious dialogue or just a casual chat. There’s a wide range of topics and subjects you can explore as well. However, as versatile as it may seem, without the willingness on the part of the responder to engage in a talk, one- word reply, like “Nothing,” shuts down the communication, unless the other party is persistent and determined to get the other one to talk.
At this point, you’re probably wondering where this conversation is going? I don’t blame you. I didn’t know where it was leading me to, either, until now when I decided to answer the question myself. What’s going on in my neck of the woods? And what’s with the title of this article? Well, here’s what…
Having missed putting out my column on our issue of March 16-31, there’s quite a lot to write about, on the home front and elsewhere. So let me begin with the official announcement that our much awaited grandchild, Quincy David Sheaffer arrived amidst a snowstorm on March 5, 2013 at 9:03 A.M. at the Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicago. As proud and excited grandparents, Bart and I braved the storm that day and drove two hours through traffic to see our precious Quincy. We posted the good news and Q’s photo on facebook shortly after and family and friends started chiming in their comments. Then, from out of the blue, my niece attached an all too familiar political name to Quincy, “sequester baby,” she commented on facebook with a smiley.
She had meant it to be just a light-hearted, mindless joke except that for the sake of conversation and its political relevance, I’m making a case out of it. Somehow, Sequester Baby touched a sensitive chord in my social consciousness. It brings to mind the annoying political stunts these politicians in Capitol Hill pulled off to deceive us into believing that they care about us and the wellbeing of our country. The truth is, having seen the end results of this sequester wheeling and dealing among these vaudevillians, I can’t help wondering how, despite the seeming disparity between Boehner and his Republican ilk’s position on one hand and the President’s and his fellow Democrats’ hypocrisy on the other, we still always end up with the shorter end of the stick? How is it that despite the President and his party’s promise to protect Medicare, Social Security and those social programs that the hardworking class of people needs so badly in order to cope with the mounting challenges of this time, they are the first to go in the chopping block? It baffles me greatly just thinking why more often than not, in most of those political gridlocks between the Republicans and the Democrats in Congress, the Democrats appeared to be the one to always make the most concessions?
And so, the President signed a bill last March 26, making the $85 billion in sequester cuts permanent – the $9.9 billion in cuts to Medicare, $2 billion in public housing assistance cuts, $840 million in cuts to special education programs, including $400 million in cuts to Head Start, the early childhood education. The bill passed with a bipartisan support by both houses of Congress yet it felt like we’ve been duped! Well, for one, while federal government employees have to go on furloughs that will cost them pay cuts of 20 to 35 percent, the House of Representatives somehow managed to sneak a language into the bill that gave it flexibility in allocating these cuts. Not surprisingly, despite Boehner and his fellow Republicans’ declaration of victory on the sequester deal, the Republican House has already initiated retroactive efforts to get rid of the sequester cuts on their favored programs, namely defense budget and national security. Thus, there’s already a move to give Pentagon $7 billion budget, $2 billion more than the President’s budget allocation.
A writer from the Socialist website ripped the President in his article, pointing out that, “In reality, Obama’s posturing as a defender of the “middle class” is entirely for show. Far from expanding programs like public education, Obama has from the beginning of his term attacked social spending, with over 700,000 state, local, and federal government jobs eliminated since he took office. His principal “economic goal” was to bail out the banks and oversee a historic transfer of wealth from the working class to the financial elite
Seeing how the Affordable Care Act, better known as “Obamacare,” has been approved only after its greatest features have been watered down and the gun control laws such as the ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines had been abandoned for lack of support even from some Democrats, I can’t help feeling disgusted.
Knowing though that I can’t look to the Republican Party as an alternative, I’m left without much choice but stick with the lesser evil. Some choice this one is.