Freshman Congressman Hakeem Jeffries is disappointed that the White House and congressional leaders couldn’t come to an agreement Friday in time to prevent sequestration.
As a result painful indiscriminate government spending cuts totaling $85 billion dollars are now in effect.
Jeffries says the “Washington wizards has a better chance of winning the NBA championships than congressional leaders coming together to try to find a balanced approach to dealing with deficit reduction.”
Congress is “trying to balance the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable people in our society, pregnant women, children, seniors and super storm Sandy victims. These are going to be the individuals who will be impacted by these dramatic cuts,” he said.
He also adds that lawmakers, including himself, need to be in Washington working on ways to “blunt the impact” of what will be initially a slow burn, but eventually impact a lot of individuals. Sequestration will cost the New York City housing, which manages public housing, $190 million, he says. Another $2.5 billion in superstorm Sandy aid is also on the chopping block because of sequestration–an extra letdown to a community who were only just celebrating after Congress passed the vote in January to get them the financial aid they needed to recover from the storm.
He says Congress shouldn’t wait until the financial pain the sequestration will bring begins to set in before deciding to find a balanced approach to push things forward.
Richard Spiropoulos