Political leaders and their lemmings

1) Increase in taxes.

2) Cut in federal spending.

3) Combination of both.

Pick one. Pick them all.

Something has to give by March 1 by the battling political parties or No. 2 will happen. With either No. 1 or No. 2 happening alone will result in economic disaster for the U.S.

Regardless of who came up with the so-called sequester – the Obama Administration or the Republican leadership – is a bad idea that will putrefy any chance of retaining a continuation of the slowly recovering economy.

The bugaboo of the “sequester” has taken on a surreal perspective. What it is and what it does is often misunderstood.  

First, “sequester” is a verb, not a noun. The word is variously described as meaning:

1) to remove or withdraw into solitude or retirement; seclude.

2) to remove or separate.

3) in law, to remove (property) temporarily from the possession of the owner; seize and hold, as the property and income of a debtor, until legal claims are satisfied.

March 1 is not the drop-dead date for the spending cuts. The original deadline was January 1, 2013, and that date was slipped. It could possibly slip again by the hard-headed party leaders in Washington-on-the-Deficit.

The $1-plus trillion in automatic spending cuts to federal spending would take effect over the next 21 months. In addition to about 50 percent coming from the Defense Department (about 15 percent of the department’s total budget) and the other 50 percent from domestic program, the sequester is estimated to result in the loss of more than a million jobs by the end of 2014.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that the Bipartisan Policy Center estimates that even with the present slow growth in job numbers, the nation would net slightly less than three million jobs over that period.

That’s the end of the good news. Areas that would definitely be adversely affected if the sequester becomes a reality include funding for special education, education for the disadvantaged, disaster relief, disease control, mental health services, food and drug safety, scientific research and air transportation security and traffic control, among others.

Former Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas said in in 1985 when the Balanced Budget and Emergency Control Act, of which he was co-author, was passed: “It was never the objective of the act to trigger the sequester; the objective ,,, was to have the threat of sequester force compromise and action.”

Well, Gramm never faced the problem of a sharply divided House and Senate and elected officials who literally hate each other and believe that “compromise” is a four-letter word.

It is becoming apparent that the Republican and Democratic Party leaders would rather see America’s economy crash and burn than suffer what they consider as “humiliation” in reaching a compromise that includes tax increases AND spending cuts to meet the objectives of the “sequester.”

Who will cry “UNCLE!” first?

The majority of Americans have already uttered the word. All we’re asking is that our leaders swallow partisan pride and do what is right in order to keep any economic suffering to an absolute minimum and work toward reducing the deficit and mandating a balanced budget.

The present leaders and the mental lemmings that follow their lead simply don't seem to have the degree of love of country necessary for meaningful compromise,