Activist Post
February 25, 2013
As the March 1 deadline rapidly approaches for what has been termed the
“Sequestration,” the majority of Americans seem unable to do anything
other than sit idly by and wonder to themselves what programs and
agencies will be cut under the guise of “balancing the budget,”
“reducing the deficit,” and “cutting government spending.”Unfortunately, by applying terminology to the latest “crisis” in Congress such as the “Debt Ceiling,” “Fiscal Cliff,” and now the “Sequester,” the mainstream media, along with the relevant government agents, major banks, and corporations, are able to hype the population into a state of hysteria and fear (for those that actually pay attention to anything other than the latest television show) so that the general public will be thoroughly convinced that the only way to avoid imminent disaster is to reach a compromise in the form of cuts, firings, and a general reduction of standards of living.
In reality, the creatively-named “Sequester” is nothing more than semantic jargon devised for purposes of the implementation of austerity measures against the American people. It is quite clear that, although the Sequester itself exempts many social safety net programs in terms of its automatic spending cuts pending a failure of Congress to reach an agreement, the social safety net is very much on the table in the course of those discussions.
While not openly labeled as Austerity measures, the growing cuts to the American social safety net and U.S. critical infrastructure coupled with alarming increases in taxes for low income to upper middle income workers should leave no doubt as to what is actually taking place within the United States. Although nomenclature and terminology may be different in the public discourse, make no mistake that Americans have much more in common with the Greeks, Spanish, Irish, and other Austerity victims than they may wish to admit.
Largely at the forefront of any budgetary discussion in the United States is the issue of government spending as it relates to programs such as Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, Unemployment Insurance, Food Stamps, etc. – programs that have been given the politically charged name of “entitlement programs” in order to associate the spoiled child mentality with programs that have actually been funded by the taxes of working people during the course of an entire lifetime.
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