Yes, Some Sequester Cuts Are Already Being Made

     One criticism of the President is that he's been a  Cassandra claiming that the sky is falling and predicting immediate cuts that when looked at, aren't quite true. There's a sense that the Administration has been trying to too hard to talk about the immediate pain of the sequester and that this might cost Obama some credibility.

     It's true that you can get too much into quibbling over small points-there's little doubt there will be pain ,the exact time line may not be clear. However, there are places that already begun looking to cut back on Friday:

    “These people are very, very, very poor,” said Sheila Crowley, the president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, speaking of recipients of federal housing support across the country. “They don’t have resources to fall back on.”

In some places, officials have already started carrying out cuts. For instance, King County in Washington State, which includes Seattle, stopped issuing new housing vouchers on Friday.

    “Sequestration will result in some 600 fewer families in our local communities receiving crucial rental assistance over the next year,” Stephen Norman, the executive director of the county housing authority, said in a statement. “Because rents are so high, many of these families may, quite literally, find themselves out on the street.”

    "Members of Congress have indicated that they might give agencies more discretion in fulfilling the cuts, to help blunt their impact. But policy experts said that in the case of many low-income programs, budget cuts would necessarily mean fewer people get help."

   “There’s no loose change in the cushions,” Ms. Crowley said. “Anything you take out of HUD is going to reduce services and cut programs. There’s just no fat there. There hasn’t been for a long time.”

     http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/us/politics/poor-face-most-pain-as-automatic-budget-cuts-take-effect.html?hp&_r=0

     So it's not true that there will be no pain right away. True much of it will hit the poorest first.In some ways this is reminiscent of the 1995 government shutdown. Republicans clearly don't ever want to go there again, but they did in 1995. Back then, they thought it would be no big deal and accused President Clinton of being alarmist in talking about the pain of a government shutdown. 

     The GOP had to learn the hard way on the government shutdown. It's also convinced it doesn't want to force a default on the debt ceiling after all the political blowback it received in 2011; a case can be made is that this was the first impetus for their big losses last November 6. 

    However, they still want to believe that the sequester is acceptable blackmail. So it's as if they have to be convinced that it will produce the pain Obama says before they will feel they have to make a deal. Part of why we go from crisis to crisis is because they're always looking for that elusive "leverage" they're sure is out there where they get to ignore the will of the American people in this last election. 

    So Boehner on Meet the Press yesterday said he's not sure if there will be pain or not. Just like his GOP candidate in 1995-Gingrich-didn't know. Turns out then there was pain, and so after the GOP knew. But is this the way to do things? With such a fragile recovery do we really want to be gambling that the latest game of chicken will turn out to not be so bad at all?