So far the Sequester hasn’t been all it was cracked up to be…or has it? We haven’t been hit that hard. We are still sitting in the 9th (is that the number?) wealthiest county in the nation and all my friends have jobs who want one. It also hasn’t hit Fairfax or Loudoun Counties. So what’s all the hoopla over?
The Sequester for 2013 is hitting the invisible folks. Those folks we just don’t see. Meals on Wheels has been cut. The Washington Post had an article yesterday about a church who just wan’t going to be able to afford to keep their Meals on Wheels program going. Some of the people were struggling to pay the $2.50 a day for the 2 hot meals brought to them. What will these people do? Many can’t care for themselves. Many can’t afford food at these prices. Most older folks can’t afford to not have nutritious food.
Another area that has been slammed has been Indian Schools. You know, Native Americans. We don’t have to see it. According to the Washington Post:
The public schools on the isolated, windswept Fort Peck Indian reservation here are at the frontier of the federal sequester, among the first to struggle with budget cuts sweeping west from Washington.
The superintendent can’t hire a reading teacher in an elementary school where more than half the students do not read or write at grade level. Summer school, which feeds children and offers them an alternative to hanging around the reservation’s trash-strewn yards, may be trimmed or canceled.
And in a school system where five children recently committed suicide in a single year — and 20 more made the attempt — plans to hire a second guidance counselor at the high school have been scrapped, leaving one person to advise some 200 students.
