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Larry Kissell: This week in Washington
Story Date: 8/20/2012
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Source: U.S. Rep. Larry Kissell (N.C.-8th), 8/17/12
Much attention has been paid recently to something going in Washington called “sequestration.” Sequestration is a silly name for a bad idea. And like most bad ideas, this plan to gut national defense spending has its roots in some other really bad ideas designed to allow politicians to avoid making hard choices, and prevent them from answering to the people they represent.
Sequestration is a series of mandatory budget cuts that will take place at the end of the year that were agreed to last spring in exchange for increasing the nation’s debt ceiling. I opposed raising the debt ceiling and I opposed sequestration. America needs to stop borrowing money and we need to cut spending. Members of Congress should vote for those things directly. Sequestration attempts to cut spending on the backs of our service men and women, our senior citizens and our pre-school age children. I am against taking that approach. Those who are for taking that approach should take a vote to do so.
The cuts to our national defense budget included in this deal total $500 billion. These cuts would give America its smallest ground force since 1940 and its smallest naval fleet since 1915. America cannot continue to be a force for good in the world if we can’t defend ourselves. These cuts are reckless and threaten to return America to a time when we were an unprepared bystander, able only to respond to world events rather than influencing them.
I get as nostalgic as anyone on occasion, but I have no desire to see our great nation assume the posture it had in the world in 1915 or even 1940. We emerged from the wars of the first half of the last century as a global leader, a leader with responsibilities both at home and abroad. Our nation, and in fact the cause of freedom in the world, will suffer irreparable harm if we lose the capacity to defend ourselves, our interests and our values. Our nation and our allies have enemies. Those enemies are not reducing their capacity to do us harm. We must not reduce our capacity to prevent it.
The defense cuts are projected to cost North Carolina over 34,000 jobs in 2014. That makes North Carolina’s economy the 10th hardest hit by the cuts, and would cripple an economy that will still be in recovery mode. The National Association of Manufacturers says these cuts will lead to the loss of 1,010,000 private sector jobs, 130,000 manufacturing jobs and 200,000 military jobs in 2014. It is my belief that the loss in revenue created by this job killing legislation will offset many of the so-called cuts while having the even more harmful effect of putting well over one million Americans out of work and on government assistance.
Sequestration will also cut basic services to senior care and early childhood education in North Carolina. Long-term nursing care will be cut by $636,980. Senior nutrition will be cut by $1,741,738. Head Start will be cut by $13,437,873, cutting service for 2,146 children in our state. The North Carolina Education Title I program will be cut by $34,078,909. These cuts will eliminate thousands of jobs in the fields of senior and child care throughout North Carolina.
The debt ceiling deal and sequestration have allowed Congress to keep borrowing money and then automatically gut funding for our military without Washington politicians having to make another vote to do so. This is gutless in the classic Washington fashion. Every day you turn on the television, you hear another congressman or senator who voted for sequestration talking about what a bad idea it is now that the American people are finding out exactly what it contains.
This process has revealed for all the world to see exactly how Washington works, or more precisely, how it does not work. Congress agrees to borrow money in the present in exchange for promising to cut spending in the future. They set it up so they will not be forced to vote on the cuts, and then when it comes time to make those cuts, everyone who voted for the deal starts to talk about how horrible the deal is. It would be laughable were the consequences not so dire.
I knew at the time the deal was horrible. I knew borrowing more money was wrong and I knew paying for that increased borrowing on the backs of our military and seniors and small children was wrong. That is why I voted against all of it.
I am the co-sponsor of legislation to create a federal balanced budget amendment. I also cosponsored a bill to eliminate government redundancies and another to eliminate unwarranted regulations. Government spending must be cut. Our debt must be reduced. It is the responsibility of Congress to devise plans to achieve these goals. But any action taken should be debated in view of the public and the cuts should be subject to a vote. This is too important to trust to procedural trickery or back room deals.
I will continue to oppose any effort to pay for reckless government spending and borrowing by weakening our national defense or denying care to the most vulnerable members of our society. I will support no deal that puts more Americans out of work and on to welfare. And I certainly will not support any deal that allows all of this to be done without a full vote of the Congress, and a full debate in public of exactly where the cuts are being made, and how that money is being spent.
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