Its starting. The government is announcing cuts, they say are forced by the sequester, in areas that will affect the public the most. Just today tours of the white house have been cancelled and furlough notices have gone out to air traffic controllers. There are lots of ways that the coming sequestration story could play out, and some of those ways may not be what the government was hoping for.
First it seems obvious that the bureaucratic sequester strategy will be to make the cuts as painful as possible for the public. The hope will be to have voters come kicking and screaming, demanding that budgets be re-instated. There has already been much made of an e-mail from the White House, to a branch of the Ag Dept, saying that cuts should be made… “not contradicting what we said the impact(s) would be.”
How will this strategy play out against a backdrop of a government that has promised, just this week 60 more million (total now close to 400 Mil) to Syria, another 250 Million for Egypt (over 1 billion annually)? There are already grumblings in the blogosphere about a government that pushes on with the F-35 program, at an estimated cost of 1.3 Trillion dollars, yet makes cuts that seem targeted to spite the public. If the public starts to feel that they are being manipulated and abused, the White House and the government may be in for very bad feedback. A lot of this will turn on how much pain is actually experienced by the public and how the media manages the story. Stay tuned.
