Sequester

Our Congress has allowed the Sequester to become active and by doing so have put the full burden of reducing the spending and debt of the Country on the middleclass through 2021.  That is right, you may not be feeling it right now but with cuts of  500 billion to Defense  as Chuck Hagel indicated  the lines of defense and lives of the military and civilian personnel will be compromised, with 37.8 billion cut to education, 123 billion to medical care and over 85 billion to Social Security you have a very broad scope of middle class America that will be effected  with the possible  loss of over 750,000 jobs Nation wide..  

The most drastic of the cuts are those that were included by Paul Ryan and other of his ilk 2 years ago.  The deal was that the President  would sign this really unacceptable package in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling allowing America to avoid defaulting on its debts but with the agreement that the cuts would not go into  effect for two years and in those two years they would work with the President on  an alternate budget.  This sequester agreement was never meant to go in effect as written it was just a hammer held over the President’s head two years ago to avoid the fiscal cliff.   Congress has not held up its part of the bargain, they have  been presented with two solid alternates by the President from the Senate to negotiate  and have refused to do anything at all if it called for any type of increase on the wealthy.  They will not even discuss closing the loopholes that allow the richest in our land to escape paying hundreds of millions in taxes.  But they were willing to close what they call loopholes  of deducting cost for childcare, deducting for interest paid on mortgage, cut programs for food for poor children, remove earn income credit  and many more in order to allow the middleclass to subsidize lower taxes rates and continuing loopholes for the rich.

They  could have  considered closing tax loopholes that benefit the wealthy without directly rising a tax percentage, this would just have them paying what is now legislated as their fair share. They could have stopped all loopholes and special exemptions that allow big oil companies and huge corporation to avoid millions in taxes.  We could begin taxing big profit makers who are now considered non-profit like the NFL and other huge money making sports groups that now pay little or no income tax at all.  We could help solve Social Security  worries by removing the maximum income level for paying Social Security taxes from the 113,700 to paying on all income the same as Medicare.  Social Security is a trust fund to be used for benefits only and  at the end of 2010 the trust fund had a balance of 2.6 trillion and this fund should continue to expand to at least 2033 as it now stands and if more taxes were collected it would be solvent for years well  beyond that date..  The Social Security program is one of the most successful government programs ever instituted and has run on its own funds with the cost of .09 percent for administration and approximately  99 cents of every dollar being retuned to beneficiaries.  Social Security has nothing to do with deficit spending on other government projects and programs.  Republicans said in 1936 the program could not last more than five years and have been crying that same lament for over 75 years.   Political elitists keep your money hungry hands off our Social Security. 

This is a whole lot of words to just say that there was absolutely no reason for a sequester to ever go into effect if Congress had done its job and sat down and done some real compromising for the good of the majority of the American  people and not representation for the top 10% only.  We deserve better from that body of elected officials .  In November 2012 the American people let Washington know whose programs we wanted and it is the job of the Senate and Congress to work in a bipartisan manner to give us their best work on the programs we wanted and not their spite work.