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Health & Fitness

The Sequester Cometh

California and the rest of the nation ready for yet another federal budget debacle; The Sequester.

As Aldous Huxley famously once pointed out, “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” He'd likely be telling that to Congress… and he'd be right as California and the rest of the nation ready for yet another federal budget debacle.

The Sequester cometh.
 
California's defense industry is bracing for a $3.2-billion hit with the federal budget cuts that are expected to take effect as a result of sequestration. Remember all that job growth we supposedly created in CA? Gone.

(Parenthetically, we now have two nifty new words to use in conversation: "subsidiarity" [from Gov, brown's SOTS address] and “sequestration.” Imagine the hilarity at your St. Patrick’s Day party when you note, ‘St. Patrick did a great job with the sequestration of snakes in Ireland… a real act of subsidiarity.’ O.K., maybe not.)

Find out what's happening in Redwood City-Woodsidewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

But thaaaaat’s not all… countless other federally funded programs are also threatened and the combined effect is expected to slow the momentum that California's economy has been building over the last year.

As the state braces for some seriously severe sequestration, there are warnings of long delays at airport security checkpoints, potential slowdowns in cargo movement at harbors and cutbacks to programs, including meals for seniors and projects to combat neighborhood blight and doing harm to the mortgage interest deduction.

Find out what's happening in Redwood City-Woodsidewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Then there's the proverbial 800-pound gorilla: defense cutbacks that wll threaten our armed forces -AND- their families.

These are not GOPers crying “wolf” because they don’t want to raise taxes nor are these predictions from the Donkeys because they couldn’t come to an agreement on what areas to apply spending cuts (as opposed to the indiscriminate meat cleaver of sequestration). These economic impacts are real. And who’s going to pay the price? We are – in particular the middle class – which the President has supposedly vowed to protect but will, ultimately, fail.

Why will he fail? The cynic would say it’s so he (and the Dems) can go around blaming the Pachyderms for the economic calamity. The liberal sycophant will say it’s because the Republicans were unbending on the need to raise taxes (theoretically, in balance with spending cuts). Either way, one fears America’s middle class will be ‘sequestered’ out of existence.’

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