A Sequestering We Will Go

Update 2 July 2013

Two months have passed.  We are still sequestering across the board.  It is still no way to run a government.  But the sky has not fallen.  The slow recovery from financial hubris that we have managed is still slow, perhaps slower,but not reversed.  The trillion dollar plus deficits that Obama inherited from Bush have been cut nearly in half, thanks to the recovery, the retreats from Iraq and Afghanistan, and, yes, to the sequester itself.  Government still continues to function.

What happened?  First, Congress stooped paying attention, pleasantly distracted by the need to hold non-stop hearings on a set of juicy pseudo scandals at the IRS, (Why, the very idea that all those Tea Party charitable groups were doing too much politicking.  And did you hear that extravagant conferencing in nice venues, while hastily stopped several years back by the Obamas, had gone on before?) the State Department, (How could a bunch of  rag heads succeed in killing a popular ambassador?  How come our UN rep couldn't explain how State botched a project being run by the CIA?) and at the NSA (We hear they are actually connecting the dots between suspicious foreign phone calls and loyal American citizens using high technology meta data, whatever that is.)

Next, government agencies at all levels quietly made budget adjustments among offices and projects that were actually forbidden by the sequester law.  Unless some Congressional aide with a wild hair for some endeavor is checking, agency budget officials do pretty much what they and their bosses want with the money Congress votes.  If necessary they apologize later.  This dynamic works all the time, but especially well when arbitrary budget cuts have been levied. 

Finally, all across the country people are turning to with their time and money to rescue popular programs such as Meals-On-Wheels; local parks, and arts, etc.  Charity is usually late, inadequate and mis-allocated, but we do it better than any other country.

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Original post 2 May 2013 with minor emendations.

Sequester,  noun and verb, has become the latest portmanteau word in Washington. It strives to explain as obscurely as possible what is plainly an arbitrary across-the-board budget cut.  In Roman times sequestering meant safe keeping.  By the middle ages it was a more benign way of saying excommunicate, remove from the Church.  Maybe draw and quarter, head on a stake, to the fire.

Even later it acquired a more useful definition: remove from a public position or office.  Now we are getting somewhere!   Let us ask the people, will they, could they, rise up  and apply this meaning to the Congress of the United States?.

Oliver Cromwell said and did it best long ago: "You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"  He thus dissolved the English parliament in 1653.  There is much to be said for the parliamentary system.

President Obama of course cannot dissolve Congress, but he could do worse than quote Cromwell at them and suggest an extra long vacation.  Given the Congressional approval rating its members might take the hint, slink away and never come back.  The only other remedies allowed by our Constitution are impeachment (too hard) and defeat at the next election.  This, too, is difficult, only partially achieved in our long history even by the power of the NRA.  Besides, while we despise Congress, we universally think our own Congress persons ever so nice, and vote for them yet again,

Many inequities are abroad as the sequester takes hold.  Congress has provided relief only one time. Not, of course for the poor, disabled, old, sick, hungry, jobless or homeless.  Nor for strapped schools, libraries, parks, fire fighters or local governments.  Not even for military contracts in their districts.

No, relief has been speedily given by an unprecedented burst of bipartisanship only to the nation's air traffic controllers.  Start with the smaller airports without scheduled flights.  Wealthy people and corporations park their private jets in such venues, and have been known to offer rides to our legislators.  Congress persons are always in a hurry to somewhere, especially to their home towns and states for the long weekend (Thursday night to Tuesday morning) that is their tradition.

Then there is Reagan Washington National Airport.  There may be no truth to the rumor (that I just started) that the Obama administration was quietly imposing extra heavy furloughs for the lads and ladies who staff its control tower, but Congress connected the potential dots with a speed we wish the security community would emulate.  Reagan is nothing less than a lifeline to Congress, which treats it as its own.  It even has its own convenient parking lot so staffers will not have to lug their bags too far.  No air traffic delays -- or delays of any kind --  for them.

Back to the sequester.  Everybody says, "This is no way to run a government" and they are right. But it is our way today,  And it will only get worse by stunting the recovery.  The only relief from the present and coming gloom is gallows humor.  Some was supplied lately by cartoonist Walt Handelsman of Newsday.  He turned "Sequester" into an all purpose word.  A sampling: from his panel:

Agitated husband speaking to wife: "The dog sequestered on the carpet!"

Restaurant diner: "I ordered my steak rare."  Waiter: "@#$%& amp; Sequester!!"

Wife to perplexed husband:  "John -- this isn't working . . .I want a Sequester."

Wife in bed with back to unhappy husband: "Not tonight dear -- I have a Sequester."

'Tis better to laugh than cry. Maybe better to be lucky than wise.  Let us pray.