My daughter was working on her homework last night. Wordly Wise is the book that her 7th grade class uses to build vocabulary skills. It includes words like: placated, gruesome, garrison, grievous, erroneous. I thought to myself, we should add sequestration for surely it is the word of the day.
Only problem is trying to figure out what definition to give it. Surely not budget planning, surely not public policy. Poison pill is overly dramatic.
Arbitrary, automatic spending cuts is accurate. So is chronic, persistent, and governance malaise.
Bad enough that we take a blunt rule designed and approved by both parties well over a year ago as a way to set a deadline to address our budget deficit. And then when no thoughtful policy and economic solution is reached, we spend time on the airwaves pointing fingers across the red and blue aisle.
My nephew is a Marine in Afghanistan. His wife is home with their two young children. They aren’t red or blue.
The Pentagon works to protect all of us and domestic programs, our National Parks have been preserved for all Americans. The Park Service isn’t red or blue.
Children in Head Start are trying to learn to share, to play together, to take turns. To them, red and blue are simply colors.
So if it isn’t about colors, is it about numbers: 2.5% or $85 billion. Yes if we had to cut 2.5% from our household budget we would figure it out. But that isn’t really the problem either.
Sequestration is a distraction albeit one where many children, families, and elders will be unintended casualties. Maybe we just aren’t governable. Or maybe we just don’t like to do the tough work, re-think tax policy, re-think subsidies and loopholes.
The Mayan’s did not say that the sun would not come up after 2012–that was spin too.
We need to invest more wisely in education and in our national defense. I am not going to suggest we add sequestration to the vocabulary list, but we should add good governance, compromise, and discipline to its remedy.