In Killeen, Tex., where the country’s largest Army post drives the local economy, automatic federal budget cuts would furlough about 6,000 of Fort Hood’s civil service workers for one day each week. Mayor Dan Corbin predicted home sales and construction would grind to a halt; restaurant and shop owners, he said, are “worried sick.”
Of those who think the reductions wouldn’t have a painful impact, the Republican said: “I don’t know what planet these people are living on.”
That planet is about 200 miles north on the interstate in Collin County: sprawling and well-to-do suburban Dallas. Sure, some federal grants would go away, but County Judge Keith Self said few of Collin’s 800,000-plus residents would notice. “We can handle this,” said Self, also a Republican and the county’s top elected official. “Anything we can cut — sure, absolutely.”
President Obama is painting a dire portrait of across-the-board doom and gloom from the automatic cuts, known as sequestration, set to begin Friday. But the sequester is really like a tornado, scattershot in its course. It would strike some communities and largely bypass others, cutting across class, politics and geography.
Interviews with more than a dozen state and municipal leaders coast to coast show that the sequester would afflict big cities and military communities — because of cuts to social programs and defense — far more than middle-class suburbs or rural areas. The disparity in some ways mirrors the nation’s electoral divide between Democrats and Republicans.
The discrepancies help explain why House Republicans — many of whom represent rural and outer suburban districts — feel little urgency to strike a deal with Obama and avert the sequester. They also suggest that the misery expected Friday would not be universal, meaning that public outcry may not be loud or widespread enough to propel Washington toward a quick solution.
“Until the pain gets hard enough, they probably won’t do anything,” said Steve Bell of the Bipartisan Policy Center.
The sequester is a package of across-the-board, indiscriminate spending cuts that total $85 billion for the current fiscal year and $1.2 trillion over the next decade. The cuts are split evenly between the defense budget and non-defense discretionary spending, which includes many federal grants to state and local agencies. Mandatory programs, including Social Security and Medicaid, are spared.
Military communities would be hit hard with work stoppages. Pay for border patrol agents would be cut. Some funding for teachers would get the ax, and reductions are in store for HIV testing, job-search assistance and Meals on Wheels for senior citizens.
And yet the federal government is so sprawling that millions of Americans may never feel any effect from the cuts.
“This is going to hit some areas and regions much more than others,” Bell said. “This is not a situation where on the second of March the lights are going to go off or people are going to be sent home. This is a slow-moving kind of situation which will aggregate itself.”
Impact of budget cuts depends on where you live and who you are
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Impact of budget cuts depends on where you live and who you are
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