No Apologies
Let the sequester happen…and don’t apologize for Obama’s bad policy.
In 2008 I was laid off due to the housing market crash, created by the Clinton Administration. I have worked for three different private sector companies since. One shut the doors because they could not compete in this economy, the next was a commission job for a greedy and crazy employer, (that lasted two months), and my current position was a fall back on a trade I learned in my 20’s. I am making 22% less and my taxes are higher than they were in 2008 and I have not had health insurance since the early ’90s, small construction companies can’t afford it. To put it mildly I am not impressed with Obama’s economy, and in 2014 I am going to have to pay for health insurance or a fine whether I can afford it or not. Instead of planning for the future, saving money for retirement, I will be cutting back just to survive.
When I hear about all of these federal employees and their unions whining about taking a day a week off due to cuts I cringe. Their pay has been frozen but the vaunted benefits are the same. I have gone backwards and the federal government has added employees since Obama became POTUS. So the only “business” that thrives in a recession, apparently, is the federal government. And they produce nothing.
Union leaders cannot stop the furloughs or determine who in each agency must take them. They are demanding that employees be able to choose when to take days off and volunteer for more to help financially strapped colleagues. They want guarantees that no one will be penalized when work does not get done and assurances that managers cannot choose favorites to spare.
“Many of you will be missing eight, 10, 20 days of work,” Alex Bastani, president of Local 12 of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), told a standing-room-only crowd of 400 Labor Department employees Thursday at a lunchtime town hall on sequestration.
“The imminence of it is what’s scaring me,” Louise Leonard Campbell, an economist for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, said Thursday as she left the meeting. “I’m a single mom. My son has health issues. This is just snowballing.”
“We are just living from one paycheck to another, and this could be really bad for us,” said Jorge Figueroa of Silver Spring, who works in quality control for the unemployment insurance division. He has four children, two in college. “I am telling you, this is going to be very stressful.”
Until you do something that benefits me or mine you get zero sympathy. As a matter of fact you can kiss my ass, you should feel blessed and lucky you have a job.
