This just in. YOU DON’T HAVE TO TAKE THE SEQUESTER LAYING DOWN. Yep, that’s right make enough noise and you to can find funding for your entire operation. Don’t believe me? Just read this excerpt from the Washington Post:
Last week, President Obama signed a spending bill that gave the Agriculture Department’s food inspectors what everybody else wanted: a get-out-of-the-sequester card. Their program got $55 million in new money, which replaced almost all of what the sequester took…
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack insisted that the sequester would force him to shut down all U.S. meat production on at least 11 days.
The inspectors union didn’t believe that. Neither did many in the powerful meat lobby. But they were too worried not to help Vilsack anyway. After an extensive campaign, the Senate gave Vilsack the money.
So how did the sequester not work?
It’s actually simple Vilsack just said no, I can’t do it.
Food inspection is important, but so is air traffic control, military and pretty much every other government service. Should these agencies just start mailing it in with the same can’t do attitude? I think the simple answer is an absolute NO, but seriously looking at this example could you blame them if they did?
No one like the sequester and less can’t always be turned into more, should we all just be following Vilsack’s lead?
I know that sometimes various accounts are “fenced” so that funds cannot be re-programmed into or out of those accounts … but what I don’t understand about the sequester is that apparently the law is written so that every account in the affected organizations must be impacted equally & that the Dept heads or managers have been stripped of any authority to re-program or move funds from one account to another account. If your salary account must be cut, then you must go to furloughs seems to be the argument. In my personal budget if I go on furlough and have less to spend, I don’t cut my food budget, my utility budget, my rent/mortgage budget … instead I cut my entertainment budget or clothing budget or retirement contribution budget or charitable giving budget. Apparently this approach cannot be used by the federal government … why not?