The White House released what it says will be the effects of the so-called sequester on the state of Missouri:
MISSOURI IMPACTS
If sequestration were to take effect, some examples of the impacts on Missouri this year alone are:
♦ Teachers and Schools: Missouri will lose approximately $11.9 million in funding for primary and secondary education, putting around 160 teacher and aide jobs at risk. In addition about 17,000 fewer students would be served and approximately 60 fewer schools would receive funding.
♦ Education for Children with Disabilities: In addition, Missouri will lose approximately $10.8 in funds for about 130 teachers, aides, and staff who help children with disabilities.
♦ Work-Study Jobs: Around 1,280 fewer low income students in Missouri would receive aid to help them finance the costs of college and around 750 fewer students will get work-study jobs that help them pay for college.
♦ Head Start: Head Start and Early Head Start services would be eliminated for approximately 1,200 children in Missouri, reducing access to critical early education.
♦ Protections for Clean Air and Clean Water: Missouri would lose about $3,745,000 in environmental funding to ensure clean water and air quality, as well as prevent pollution from pesticides and hazardous waste. In addition, Missouri could lose another $1,184,000 in grants for fish and wildlife protection.
♦ Military Readiness: In Missouri, approximately 8,000 civilian Department of Defense employees would be furloughed, reducing gross pay by around $40.3 million in total.
♦ Army: Base operation funding would be cut by about $56 million in Missouri.
♦ Air Force: Funding for Air Force operations in Missouri would be cut by about $14 million.
♦ Law Enforcement and Public Safety Funds for Crime Prevention and Prosecution: Missouri will lose about $298,000 in Justice Assistance Grants that support law enforcement, prosecution and courts, crime prevention and education, corrections and community corrections, drug treatment and enforcement, and crime victim and witness initiatives.
♦ Job Search Assistance to Help those in Missouri find Employment and Training: Missouri will lose about $758,000 in funding for job search assistance, referral, and placement, meaning around 25,460 fewer people will get the help and skills they need to find employment.
♦ Child Care: Up to 700 disadvantaged and vulnerable children could lose access to child care, which is also essential for working parents to hold down a job.
♦ Vaccines for Children: In Missouri around 2,500 fewer children will receive vaccines for diseases such as measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, whooping cough, influenza, and Hepatitis B due to reduced funding for vaccinations of about $171,000.
♦ Public Health: Missouri will lose approximately $572,000 in funds to help upgrade its ability to respond to public health threats including infectious diseases, natural disasters, and biological, chemical, nuclear, and radiological events. In addition, Missouri will lose about $1,300,000 in grants to help prevent and treat substance abuse, resulting in around 3300 fewer admissions to substance abuse programs. And the Missouri State Department of Health & Senior Services will lose about $211,000 resulting in around 5,300 fewer HIV tests.
♦ STOP Violence Against Women Program: Missouri could lose up to $127,000 in funds that provide services to victims of domestic violence, resulting in up to 500 fewer victims being served.
♦ Nutrition Assistance for Seniors: Missouri would lose approximately $419,000 in funds that provide meals for seniors
The Erstwhile Conservative: A Blog of Repentance 
thgeneralist
/ February 25, 2013Duane —
Do you think it’s possible the GOP will be able to turn their cold and cynical desire for sequestration into a brutal-but-just political self-castration?
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Bbob
/ February 25, 2013Looks to me like they will. I keep thinking the Repugnicians won’t dare go any farther down the road to extremism, but they keep on surprising me.
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R. Duane Graham
/ February 25, 2013Bob.
Those House Republicans are still smarting over what happened on the fiscal cliff. Thus, there’s no telling what they will stoop to in order to wound President Obama. The only question is whether Boehner will let a vote happen in the House without majority GOP support first. That is the key to any settlement. A compromise can be reached, I think, in the Senate, but not in the House. Boehner would have to rely on a majority of Democratic votes to get anything like a compromise passed. If he does that again (he’s done in twice now), he will likely be doomed as Speaker (if there’s anyone dumb enough to take the job).
RDG
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R. Duane Graham
/ February 25, 2013This one has me perplexed, I admit. Like Bbob, I keep thinking things can’t get worse. But there is a whole month of fighting to come before we see how this gets resolved. It all comes down to John Boehner. If he will allow a vote in the House on any plan coming from the Senate, then a settlement is possible, even likely. If he insists on having a majority of Republican support before he allows any vote, things are doomed.
The question is if that happens, if things get shut down, will the GOP pay a price? Damn right they will. Which is why I think in the end Boehner and McConnell will figure out how to save a little face and move on.
Duane
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Troy
/ February 25, 2013They can’t help themselves, it’s just in their nature. At least their fellow republicans will be hurt by this sequester just as bad as we liberals.
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R. Duane Graham
/ February 25, 2013You have a point, at least around here. A lot of the folks who get help from the government are die-hard Republicans. Figure that one out.
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ansonburlingame
/ February 25, 2013Seems like the above “research” came right out of today’s Globe. It shows the pain of sequestration, for sure. So let’s not “sequester” anything, with a blunt knife.
Hell why do we need to do anything? We just raised taxes on the rich to the tune of $60 Billion this year. Isn’t that enough “deficit reduction” for one year? Opps, can’t do it that way I suppose because $50 Billion of that $60 Billion just went “east” did it not?
So raising taxes seems to have failed, in the first year. We spent that revenue increase in just about one quick bill in Congress. so it would seem that if deficit reduction is indeed needed, well we have to cut “something”.
OK let’s cut the deployment of one carrier battlegroup to maybe help keep the Straits of Hormuz open for another year. Easy to do and probably the Straits will not be closed anyway, right, we Hope!!
I wonder how many shore duty billets could, instead, be eliminated in just the Navy (and fire all the sailors in those billets this year) and save the equivalent amount of money???
You have defined quite well the effects of the meat cleaver on just MO, Duane. So get out your scaple and cut “something” to BEGIN a deficit reduction effort that actually does what is intended, reduce deficits, meaningfully.
OK, I know, we don’t need to cut the deficits immediately, right. Just keep on borrowing until the debt to GDP ratio reaches……..??? Care to fill in the dots with a number. Obviously 100% is not too high. How about 125%, or 200% or…… and when exactly will we HAVE to “bend that curve” which you called for some 4 years ago and to what level MUST debt to GDP fall back to before socialism (opps, I should have said Keynesian economics) can again prevail across the land???
Anson
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R. Duane Graham
/ February 25, 2013Once again, you can’t see that what is imperative at this time is not debt reduction, but job creation (which ipso facto will help reduce the deficit).
In any case, I guess it’s time for yet another correction (one I have to make for you from time to time). You keep trying to assert that the debt to GDP ratio is 100% and more. From the CBO:
As I think even you can clearly see, the national debt is not projected to go above 80% in the meaningful future. Stop it, please. We are talking about “Federal Debt Held By The Public.” Okay?
Duane
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ansonburlingame
/ February 26, 2013Duane,
Here we go again aruging over “numbers”. You KNOW the point. Above is PUBLIC debt to GDP ratio. Now go look at TOTAL debt on the part of the federal government and ratio that one to GDP. That number is somewhere well above 100% TODAY AND it assumes we will “sell the White House” as an asset before liquidating the remaining debt.
But why bother. We have had this argument before!! To me Debt is money owed, period, to anyone or anything.
Anson
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R. Duane Graham
/ February 27, 2013Anson,
If you think debt owed to yourself and debt owed to others is the same thing, that explains why you don’t yet understand what it is I am saying. Wow.
Duane
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Roger H Frost
/ February 25, 2013Is Obama Really A Saudi Muslim “Plant” In The White House?
Youtube ^ | October 10, 2012 | Avi Lipkin
Posted on Thursday, October 11, 2012 9:57:16 AM by demkicker
Listen to what an Arabic language expert discovered by monitoring Arabic broadcasts in t.v. & radio.
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thgeneralist
/ February 25, 2013Wow. A nut-job Israeli Zealot promoter, sneaking into this good site. To quote from the video. “Could it be” that Robert H frost is just another right wing racist? Yep!
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R. Duane Graham
/ February 25, 2013Generalist,
I allowed his last two automated posts to stand because we need to remember these folks are out there. By the way, that video has had 4.5 million hits. Sad, sad, sad.
Duane
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thgeneralist
/ February 25, 2013I get it, Duane. A true liberal opens the door for comment — from the sane and the not-so. Thus, the remarkable integrity of this blog. I have an uncle — a basically decent-but-misguided old guy who has been led around by the nose his whole life. He trembles with joy every time some new nutty idea comes out trying to impune the reputation of the good man in the White House. I honestly believe that each time Fox Propaganda and video clips like the one from Frost are refuted, he goes to bed in tears. We are still too largely a petty, angry, hate-filled nation of social and philosophical simpletons. THAT makes me weep.
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R. Duane Graham
/ February 25, 2013Well said, well said.
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Herb Van Fleet
/ February 25, 2013Duane,
The whole sequestration thing is just another example of the ineptitude of Congress and, frankly, in the White House as well. The whole idea of the sequestration bill, approved by Congress and signed into law by Obama in August 2011, was to make cuts to the military and domestic programs so draconian that common sense and a sense of the common good would guide these people to stop the thing well before it was to go into effect. But it turned into an episode of “I Love Lucy” were everybody was in a panic trying to get a very pregnant Lucy to the hospital with the result that they all took off, leaving Lucy standing alone . . . and abandoned.
So, I don’t really blame the states for not going into a panic over the sequestration before now. Nobody really believed it would come to pass. But then it became as obvious as Anne Hathaway’s nipples on Oscar night that, OMG, it is going to HAPPEN!
It used to be said that we should never underestimate the stupidity of the voters. But when you get stupid people voting for stupid people, you get stupid results.
Herb
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Treeske
/ February 25, 2013Herb, Amen!
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Jim Wheeler
/ February 26, 2013Herb, your I Love Lucy analogy for sequestration is perfect. I would only add that the forthcoming going-to-the-hospital scene, scheduled to start about April, is being preceded by the candy factory scene!
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R. Duane Graham
/ February 27, 2013Herb,
Anne Hathaway’s nipples notwithstanding, I think you are a little, uh, hard, on the White House by including it as part of the “ineptitude.” Don’t forget that Republicans had a gun to Obama’s (and, thus, the country’s) head in 2011. It would be asking a lot for him to have the ultimate showdown with Republicans before the upcoming election, especially considering that we were talking about default and the downgrading of the nation’s credit worthiness. That stuff is easy to forget now, but there was a reason for Obama’s “compromise” with the kidnappers at the time.
Duane
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Herb Van Fleet
/ February 27, 2013Duane,
In re President Obama: Don’t be bamboozled by the liberal media. He had plenty of opportunities to take it to the Republicans back in 2011 and up through most of 2012. He chose to lay low and potentially throw the country under the bus rather than risk losing the election. So Obama doesn’t get a pass from me. The White House is very much complicit in this sequestration disaster.
Herb
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R. Duane Graham
/ March 4, 2013Herb,
Complicit, yes. But hardly responsible. It is easy to forget the circumstances at the time. Everyone gets to the Super Bowl by Monday morning quarterbacking. He was trying to maneuver as best he could, given what was at stake and what time it was.
My problem with Obama in this matter is that he has sort of always bought into the idea that the deficit hawks keep pushing and they sensed weakness early on because of that. He ceded way too much ground in terms of the philosophical and economic argument and we have sinse argued on Republican turf: not if, but how much to cut.
Duane
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