When the term sequester is brought up, most people believe it means separating a person or a thing from its normal environment.
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, in fact, it means just: “to set apart, seclude, withdraw, seize or place property in custody.” However, the term is also used to define a series of spending cuts, which Congress passed as part of the Budget and Control Act of 2011.
Unless you are a political news junkie and follow the news religiously, you probably wouldn’t pay much attention to the word sequester. You especially wouldn’t expect it to implicate trillions of dollars in spending reductions over the course of the next decade.
The sequester has — as of today — taken effect.
If you missed out on the terms of the Budget and Control Act of 2011, here’s what you need to know about it, and about how the sequester came into being.
The proverbial elephant in deficit-reduction rooms in the halls of power is always how to effectively balance our enormous budget — which totals more than $3 trillion annually — and where to make cuts.
A “supercommittee” of legislators — Congresspeople and senators alike — was supposed to figure out how to cut $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. No deal was reached, and as incentive to come together in the coming months, extremely punitive spending cuts that impact the totality of government programs, including Defense, were passed. The cuts were supposed to be and, in fact, are so stupidly punitive that no one, Democrat or Republican, would sit on his or her thumbs and let the cuts come to fruition.
The biggest fallout for Utah is furloughs that affect jobs in lower levels of the military and government — such as at Hill Air Force Base.
If an alternative deal is reached, House Democrats would like to have a broad mix of tax increases, while Senate Democrats have proposed a plan called the American Family Economic Protection Act, which is similar to what the House wants.
Republicans, on the other hand, insist any alternative plan consists of only spending cuts and not tax revenues. They say revenues were had in the fiscal cliff deal reached in January. President Barak Obama then, in a way, used up all his bullets — and his negotiating leverage.
Democrats and Republicans need to be forced to play nice with one another. Obama should sit down with them in a room and refuse to let anyone leave until the rough outlines of a deal are reached. No one in public elected office — not the president, not the Republicans and not the Democrats — should be paid until they take measures to resolve the sequester.