6 Maxine Waters
In early 2013, a frequently heard buzzword in US media was “sequestration.” The primary fear that this term denoted was of impending cuts to many government programs. They would take effect on March 1, unless members of Congress managed to agree on how to cut $1.5 trillion in spending over the next 10 years. The deadline had originally been January 1, but a short-term deal was passed, delaying the so-called “fiscal cliff.”
Were sequestration to take effect, consequences would include military personnel not receiving pay and federal employees being laid off, among many other things. Jobs were expected to be lost, and the country’s economic growth was expected to be curtailed.
A few days before the March 1 deadline, California representative Maxine Waters spoke about the consequences of sequestration:
“We don’t need to be having something like sequestration that’s going to cause these jobs losses, over 170 million jobs that could be lost.”
Despite the warranted fears of sequestration’s effects, there is no way that it would have caused the loss of 170 million jobs. In February 2013, only 136 million people were employed in the United States. Over 100-percent unemployment would surely have been an unprecedented disaster. Representative Waters did later correct herself, changing the figure to 750,000 jobs.
Discussion about this post