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Shortly after cuts to the Federal Aviation Administration's budget took effect because of the federal sequester, Congress passed a bill to stop the furlough of FAA employees and the closure of some small airport towers.
Good on them. The air travel system is an important part of the economy, and its fortunes shouldn't have fallen prey to political shenanigans.
But it is offensive that lawmakers were so motivated to stop middle-class or wealthy constituents from being inconvenienced, while low-income Americans suffer because Washington can't get its act together around budget compromise.
Right-wingers continue to blare that the sequestration was a whimper, not a bang, saying fears of the government shutdown were stoked by Democrats to justify tax increases. They couldn't be more wrong.
The sequester was a kind of poison pill devised by Democrats and Republicans as part of the annoyingly off-base argument over raising the debt ceiling. The GOP seriously considered forcing the country to default on debt payments for money it had already borrowed, as a way to prove a point about excessive indebtedness. Kind of like walking away from a mortgage you couldn't afford after you've signed the papers and lived in the house for several years.
As a result, both parties agreed that if they couldn't reduce the federal deficit by $4 trillion by the end of 2012, a set of un-targeted cuts worth about $1 trillion would start in early 2013.
When the deal was made, everyone agreed that no one would let the across-the-board cuts take place. But that was before the bitter 2012 presidential campaign and the escalation of Republican conniptions against new revenues.
When 2013 began, there still was no deficit-reducing budget deal.
Now, federally supported programs are starting to feel the effects of sequestration. The thing is, they're not generally the kind of programs with wealthy or mediagenic constituents. The programs hit hardest tend to be social service programs that serve low-income Americans, those least likely to have influence in the corridors of power.
The FAA compromise was insulting, a sign that loud complaints from the relatively well-off resonate louder with lawmakers than the quiet travails of ordinary Americans.
No surprise, coming from the GOP, whose distance from the way most people live is why they're losing elections. And it's a new disappointment from Democrats, who should have stood firm. Why compromise on air travel when the federally funded Head Start program is in jeopardy, cancer clinics with Medicare patients can't afford to provide treatment, and Meals on Wheels is struggling to help seniors?
The worth of a society is measured by how it cares for those in need-not by how it handles long wait times at airports.
Detroit Free Press