Cuts will be harsh for families

My husband and I are 30 years old. We have two beautiful daughters that I homeschool and recently bought a home. I was so proud of my husband when he got a new job working for the Department of Defense. Little did I know that within six months, he, as well as 900 other government workers, would be asked to attend a town hall meeting to discuss the upcoming sequester. He's been told there could be layoffs as budget cuts loom. Many government workers are middle-class families like ours, and the meeting left many in tears over fear of what is to come.

I am proud to be an American, but the way our government has been working is shameful. The days of sensible bipartisanship are gone and we are left with both sides playing political chicken with our economic future. But where it hurts most, and where most politicians care the least, is in the pockets of average Joe Americans like us. If the sequester goes through, my husband, in a best-case scenario, would lose thousands of dollars in missed income from drastically cut hours at work – in the worse-case scenario, he could be unemployed. We would no longer be able to afford to homeschool the children and instead would have to put them in public school while I get a job.

I feel Matt Taibbi, a political journalist, said it best. “The failure to work out sensible budgets makes it impossible for government agencies to make long-term plans, and instead leaves them scrambling to spend money in the short term. It's an incredibly stupid way of doing business, and if these people weren't on television so often, ranting and raving like baseball managers arguing a safe call at the plate and playing to the home crowd by pointing fingers at the other side, they would probably just do what members of Congress traditionally did in the pre-mass-media age, which is quietly and (mostly) sensibly work things out, getting as much as they could for their own constituents without crossing the line into anti-patriotic acts of self-destruction – like a national default, for instance.”

This sentiment is true. Our government was not built to have this no compromise mentality. I hope and pray that those that are in control in Congress and other fat cats in Washington will come to their senses and see how these drastic across-the-board cuts will have outcomes that no one can anticipate, except for two: a loss of confidence in our government and pride in our nation.

Stefani Guerrero Soucy

Yuma