Scrunched and S'questered

So it happened. I really don't even know how I can write a blog about this to be honest. I'm not sure what there is to say. We have officially shot ourselves in the foot, maybe done worse than that. It will take some time to tell just how bad an idea the sequester really was, but it was a bad idea designed not to happen. It was supposed to force us to make hard decisions, but even staring at a self-created worst-case scenario in the face couldn't force our politicians to take real action on budget issues.

It doesn't really matter who is to blame, the fact that this happened reflects the total dysfunction of our political system. We might be better off refusing to re-elect ANYONE who currently holds a seat in Congress during the upcoming election cycles than submitting ourselves to this kind of behavior again. These people fly in private jets, so none of them will be forced to spend more time waiting in longer airport security lines in the coming months. If the current group and their ongoing behavior is the best democracy can produce we might be better off trying something else. It's truly embarrassing that this happened.

And it's bad. Embarrassing and bad. I won't go into details about all the services that will be cut; the President spent the last few weeks making that case over and over in an attempt to get Republicans to compromise. What I will say is that the spending cuts that were just forced upon us do nothing to help our long term fiscal outlook and everything to hamper our economic recovery. We wasted the opportunity to do something real and instead did something that will reverse whatever positive trajectory and momentum the economy was gaining.

I wish I could find some silver lining here, but I really don't think there is one. Our politicians didn't only fail, they abdicated responsibility for trying. This was worse than failure. Failure requires effort. And the complete lack of effort has disastrous results that will be felt in the coming months all over the country. And despite all those cuts, nothing at all substantial has been done to fix the structural spending issues facing America.

All Americans should be frustrated and embarrassed. If this is the path that we have chosen by virtue of the people we elect, the future will be bleak indeed.