Over at Nancy Pelosi’s blog, The Gavel, someone has posted a list of 15 Republicans who are on the record as actively welcoming the implementation of The Sequester. This list includes Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who may be facing a Tea Party challenge next year as he makes his bid for a sixth term in office. Imagine how fortunate our country would be to have the Human Turtle grace our Senate for 36 uninterrupted years!!
Rep. Cynthis Lummis, Wyoming’s sole member of the House, actually says that she is excited for The Sequester. Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma says that he thinks it is what people want. Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas says that it will be “a Home Run” and that people will have tremendous respect for what Congress has accomplished. Serial adulterer, Rep. Scott DesJarlais, says that The Sequester “needs to happen.”
Just so we’re clear on what these people are saying, let’s listen to the president, from his remarks today at the White House with a backdrop of emergency responders:
Now, if Congress allows this meat-cleaver approach to take place, it will jeopardize our military readiness; it will eviscerate job-creating investments in education and energy and medical research. It won’t consider whether we’re cutting some bloated program that has outlived its usefulness, or a vital service that Americans depend on every single day. It doesn’t make those distinctions.
Emergency responders like the ones who are here today — their ability to help communities respond to and recover from disasters will be degraded. Border Patrol agents will see their hours reduced. FBI agents will be furloughed. Federal prosecutors will have to close cases and let criminals go. Air traffic controllers and airport security will see cutbacks, which means more delays at airports across the country. Thousands of teachers and educators will be laid off. Tens of thousands of parents will have to scramble to find childcare for their kids. Hundreds of thousands of Americans will lose access to primary care and preventive care like flu vaccinations and cancer screenings.
And already, the threat of these cuts has forced the Navy to delay an aircraft carrier that was supposed to deploy to the Persian Gulf. And as our military leaders have made clear, changes like this — not well thought through, not phased in properly — changes like this affect our ability to respond to threats in unstable parts of the world.
So these cuts are not smart. They are not fair. They will hurt our economy. They will add hundreds of thousands of Americans to the unemployment rolls. This is not an abstraction — people will lose their jobs. The unemployment rate might tick up again.
These are all things, none of them good, that Mitch McConnell and his band of fools are saying that they want to see happen. They don’t even care if we’re short one aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.
This is obviously all Crazy Talk. In more candid moments, you can hear something a little saner. Speaker Boehner, for example, said this just six days ago:
The Ohio Republican also reiterated his opposition to letting the sequester take effect, and served up a reality check to members of his caucus who say publicly that they would be willing to let the $85 billion in across-the-board cuts take effect on March 1.
“None of them have ever lived under a sequester. For that matter, neither have I,” Boehner said. “This is going to be a little bleak around here when this actually happens and people actually have to make decisions.”
McConnell is terrified of a primary challenge and Boehner couldn’t lead his party in the Pledge of Allegiance. So, we are not going to stop The Sequester from going into effect. However, contra Rep. Mike Pompeo, the people will not respect this decision or consider it a Home Run. Rather, it will force Republicans to make some rather bleak decisions that could be made right now without doing damage to the economy or our law enforcement or our military posture.
I guess that Rep. Pompeo and his colleagues will have to learn the hard way.