Sequester: a DHL-ization of the federal budget?

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

Unless an 11th-hour deal was made last night, the sequester has sequested. The automatic cuts of $85 billion will be trimmed from the federal budget over the next seven months. 
Federal workers are freaking out about future furloughs. Hundreds of thousands of nationwide jobs will be lost, and the economy that was picking up speed will slow down again. Airports and military-base communities will be the hardest hit.
To a Clinton County resident, it sounds a lot like a DHL pullout.
It’s tough to get worked up about the substantial loss of jobs in a place that has already lost a substantial amount of jobs. Clinton County’s unemployment rate went from a low of 5 percent in April 2008 to a high of 19.1 percent in January 2010. It was at  9.7 percent ...

in December 2012, according to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, still twice what it was pre-DHL. 

It’s easy to get worked up about about federal cuts the closer you are to the seat of the federal government. That’s where well-paying jobs will be placed on the chopping block. That’s where people have been living in a bubble unaffected by the underwater housing market and widespread unemployment.
Just months before DHL dropped its devastation on Wilmington, my family moved from here to a place 10 miles from the U.S. Capitol, which is the nation’s most educated metro area, according to the Brookings Institute. 
On our short street of about 18 townhouses, nearly every household included at least one, if not two, family members working in federal jobs: members of the military, Secret Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency. If they were in the “civilian” minority, their contracts were federally funded. 
Although those people worked hard, comparatively, they were raking in the dough. A worker on the high end of the civil service pay scale can easily make more than $100,000 a year in the D.C. area, and that frequently comes on top of a military retirement check.
Of course, the cost of living is outrageous; the median home price is almost five times what it is in Wilmington. But being employed in an expensive house is usually better than being unemployed in an inexpensive house, and it’s hard to feel the pain of unemployed workers in a tiny Midwest town when you’re pulling in six figures and have darn good health insurance. 
The sequester will not turn off the lights in Washington, D.C., just as the DHL announcement didn’t shut down Wilmington. The sequester isn’t a government shutdown, it’s a slowdown. It’s a big chunk of money cut from the top of an economy, like the big slice DHL took with it when it slithered out of town. 
However, in D.C., there was ample warning that it would happen, with Congress and the White House agreeing back in 2011 to trim $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years and to set aside money, or sequester it, before spending any more.
Everyone hoped that the deal would force Congress to get serious about paying down the debt, but the president and Congress didn’t meet the deadline. So today is Sequester Day.
 Half the money will come from the Department of Defense, and half will come from social spending. We are supposed to expect relaxed border security, longer lines in airport security and the closure of hundreds of air-traffic control towers at smaller U.S. airports.
Our airpark towers are already closed.
The sequester will cost Ohio about $187 million in federal funds, according to Policy Matters Ohio. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base officials have said most of the base’s 13,000 civilian employees would be subject to unpaid furloughs; those workers live and spend money in the southwest Ohio region. Military pay and veterans benefits are exempt, as are Social Security benefits.
Just as DHL’s decision slowly forced many local businesses to cut back and eventually close, the government decision could do the same on a different scale. People may lose their homes. Television news programs will highlight those who are hardest hit. Local sales tax rates could increase. Decreased tax revenues could impact services and schools. 
Wilmington has been through a non-governmental version of sequestration, and it is still reeling from the effects, almost five years later.