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Houghton Artists Travel to Sierra Leone

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Courtesy of Renee Roberts

Earlier this year, Renee Roberts, Direct of Exhibitions at Ortlip Gallery, and Jillian Sokso, Assistant Professor of Art, traveled to Sierra Leone for a skills training trip that brought together their gifts in art with acts of ministry.

The two were asked to come to Sierra Leone by a Houghton alum on the board of  Women of Hope International, an NGO that ministers to disabled women in Sierra Leone with the mission statement to “equip and disciple women with disabilities to become life-long followers of Christ who facilitate holistic transformation in their families and communities.”

Women with disabilities in Sierra Leone often face immense challenges. Many have difficulty performing basic tasks, such as drawing water, and sometimes earning a means of providing for their families is difficult. “Some of the ladies we worked with were amputees, a lot of them became disabled through preventable disease like measles or polio and lost the use of some of their limbs or [had] some sort of mobility issue, ” said Sokso. These women sometimes even become outcasts and their families may disown them because of their disabilities.

“The point of this skills training project or skills training trip,” said Roberts during a GCF meeting on

Courtesy of Renee Roberts
Courtesy of Renee Roberts

March 12, “was to facilitate classes for these disabled women who don’t have any other way to provide for their families or for themselves because they are seen as outcasts.” Papermaking and crafts help provide these women with skills to integrate themselves back into society while also making a profit, and it was to this end that Roberts and Sokso brought their talents as professional artists.

The women at the organization had already been making stationary, said Sokso, “But they were using this cheap Chinese cardstock that wasn’t really beautiful, so they were looking for papermakers.” Roberts and Sokso, after being requested to come to Sierra Leone last year, raised money through Printed Matter Press, the Dean’s Office and a faculty fund to help with the finances of the trip.

“The whole entire trip was so amazing to see God taking these things and opening these doors,” said Roberts.

While there, Sokso and Roberts gave classes on how to make paper and also gave a crafting class. Though they had to adjust certain papermaking techniques while in Sierra Leone, as the means and tools for producing paper were a little different than at home, overall the program provided their students with skills that they can use by selling their paper on the fair trade market.

“We talk about integration of faith and learning.  But for me, this was the first thing that I did that I could authentically live out not only God’s giftedness to me and my life, but also to actually help somebody learn a skill that could be profitable to them,” said Sokso, “It was a very visual example of how you can use your gifts to help somebody else.”

Sokso also found the comparison between the fibers that they used in papermaking and the women they worked with very appropriate. “A lot of these women are told throughout their lives that they are worthless or that a demon has cursed them. A lot of their families have literally thrown them away,” she said, “But in the end we held up this grass we used to make paper and said ‘Did you ever think that anything like this could be made into something beautiful?’”

 

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Houghton Students Attend Intercultural Management Conference

On Wednesday, March 14, six Houghton students from the Political Science and Intercultural Studies Departments embarked on a trip to the Nation’s Capital. Students were to attend the American University Intercultural Management Institute’s (IMI) Annual Conference on Intercultural Relations. The conference costs were nearly all covered by the Katherine Lindley Project Fund and funding from SGA.

Courtesy of Katherine Labreque
Courtesy of Katherine Labreque

Expecting to be blown away by scholars in various studies of academia, Houghton students found themselves seemingly prepared. “The material discussed in the sessions notably confirmed and expanded my prior knowledge of intercultural relations,” said senior Ben Hardy.

Students were able to attend various lectures and simulations from scholars such as Janet Bennett, author of American Ways, which is a text familiar to many Intercultural Studies majors. Lectures included “Strengthening Higher Education in Africa,” with a visiting professor from Uganda, and “The U.S. 2012 Presidential Election: Cross-Culture Viewpoints,” with the perspective of a Japanese Professor, Motoo Unno. The diverse perspectives allowed students to observe the importance of cultural sensitivity and how awareness of different cultures can be crucial to the effects and the increasing reality of globalization.

Houghton’s group, in fact, contained the only undergraduate students attending the IMI Conference. Graduate students from Penn State, Georgetown, University of Kentucky, and international students from Iceland, Romania and China made up a majority of the attendees. “I am impressed with Houghton Students. I never heard of Houghton, but I’m sure as of now going to look into it,” said Dr. Nanette Levinson, Associate Professor at the School of International Service at American University. Over lunch we discussed with Professor Levinson some of the many global issues concerning us today in the twenty-first century, ranging from human trafficking to poverty in Africa.

Despite Houghton’s size and isolated geographic location does not prevent it from making an impression on other universities and accomplished professionals.

Sophomore Joseph Poyfair said, “Houghton has prepared me. I am equally informed as graduate students and scholars in the field I’m studying in.”

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Buffalo City Semester: Diversity Close to Home

While scrolling through the course offerings, one may easily skim over the bold print: “HOUGHTON COLLEGE CITY SEMESTER (Buffalo)”. In fact, many Houghton students are alien to the course.

Courtesy of city-data.com
Courtesy of city-data.com

One student replied to the question “Do you know what the Buffalo City Semester is?” with “I heard of it, but I don’t know exactly what you do.” Another student said, “It’s not advertised as well as it should be. I have no idea what it is.”

So what exactly is the City Semester? Located only an hour and a half away, students have the opportunity to live, learn, and explore the historical and culturally diverse city of Buffalo. While in Buffalo, students have the opportunity to engage in an academic environment where development, politics, sociology, and culture come to life. Experience becomes concrete, as professors take students across the West side of Buffalo, providing visual aids for students to stimulate ideas and connect the dots.

The city semester offers a environment drastically different than Houghton’s campus. Students can spend days roaming the streets of Buffalo, experiment with various cuisines, talk politics or philosophy over coffee, or share a home-cooked meal at the Houghton Rectory while listening to stories from Professor Massey.

City semester students also have the opportunity to intern as they take courses from professors Chuck Massey, education, and Cameron Airhart, history. Several students have taken advantage of this diverse option.

Internships are becoming more desirable in the 21st century as jobs become scarce. David Boyes, owner of a technology consultant firm, expresses his concern about students graduating today with a lack of experience as most of their time is spent behind a textbook. To combat this fad, Boyes emphasizes, “[do] an internship.”

Houghton Senior and alumni of the Buffalo City-Semester, Hannah Vardy, said, “The ability to do an internship was an amazing opportunity. Growing skills and learning about your field is a great way to begin looking towards your career or even to see if it’s not for you.” Many internships are available and include Wesley Service Corps, Jericho Road Ministries, Journey’s End, Habitat for Humanity, and numerous other local firms and institutions.

Though the city semester does not compare to the semester in Tanzania in traveling distance, it can be an equally influential experience. It is a way to connect a little place called Houghton with a big city that has its own identity. Embarking on a cultural excursion does not necessarily have to take students halfway across the world.

After being canceled this past spring, Houghton students and faculty are doing all that they can to restart the city-semester program. Professor Airhart is looking for interest in the fall 2013, as well as spring 2014. If interested, please email him at Cameron.Airhart@houghton.edu.

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Iraq 10 Years after the Invasion

It has been controversial since it began.  It divided Americans: some watching as the number of troop deaths mounted, others warning that the costs were worth it if Saddam Hussein’s threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) had any merit.  After over one trillion dollars invested in the country, no WMDs discovered at all, the capture and execution of Saddam Hussein, 4,000 dead American soldiers and over 130,000 Iraqi civilian deaths, many still wonder whether the Iraq war was worth it.

Courtesy of propublica.org
Courtesy of propublica.org

The average current college student was 10 to 11 years old when the invasion began.  I remember staying up with my Dad late that night watching television and waiting for the bombs to fall on Baghdad, Iraq’s capital.  I remember the “Mission Accomplished” banner after the fall of Baghdad just a few short weeks later.  Then the insurgency began, for which nobody was prepared.

Bush’s claim that cutting off the head of the problem would immediately resolve it proved to be wrong as the United States found itself bogged down with al-Qaeda groups and Shi’a extremists using car and suicide bombs in hope of dominating each other through attempting to get their respective populations to hate and kill each other.  It looked as though the United States was about to fail miserably, as critics said it would whenever the country attempts “nation-building”.

But then the surge happened and, after 120,000 U.S. soldiers were sent to Iraq, along with “Awakening Councils” that joined the U.S. troops to drive out al-Qaeda (whose brutal tactics had alienated large swaths of Sunnis), violence began to decline.  As security increased, investments for Iraq’s oil reserves, which some argue are larger than Iran’s, helped to bring more stability to the country.  Even after U.S. troops withdrew in December 2011, violence has remained relatively low.  There are still the occasional bombings, such as the one that killed over 60 Iraqis on the anniversary of the invasion, but, overall, Iraq remains much more stable than it was throughout the insurgency.

However, problems remain.  Iraq is a shaky democracy set up to distribute power equally among the three big ethnic groups: Shi’a, Sunni and Kurd.  But after the attempted arrest of a Sunni vice president for supposedly running death squads, arguments began between the central government and autonomous Kurd regions. These debates were over who has rights to oil reserves. With numerous Arab Spring-style protests against the government of Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi’a that Sunnis accuse of becoming increasingly dictatorial, and suicide bombings continually trying to stir sectarian tensions, Americans may wonder if, in fact, the U.S. should have ever even invaded in the first place.

In the end, nobody can say that the United States made the right choice.  Regardless of the critics that say it only stirred ethnic tensions, Iraq never did slip into a civil war or become a failed state.  At the same time, a democracy was set up, but it remains incredibly fragile, particularly considering that for almost 11 months in 2010 the country could not form a government due to political infighting between Shi’a and Sunni politicians. Nevertheless, economically, the country has been recovering; tourism flourishes as millions of Shi’a pilgrims flock to mosques and shrines throughout the country.  Foreign direct investment in the country’s oil reserves has helped to rebuild a crumbling infrastructure, and in the Kurdish regions cities bustle and commerce thrives, with virtually no violence.  The Sunnis, however, claim to be finding themselves marginalized politically and economically, creating the potential for a new conflict as frustrations rise.

Whether or not you agree that it was a good idea to invade Iraq, never forget that despite the bad, many good things have happened in the country.  This is a milestone for our generation and continues to be pertinent to an American foreign policy that promotes the establishment of liberal democracy around the world, as liberal democracies do not fight each other.  Based on this logic, this war was in America’s national interest.  A good choice?  I am not sure, but it is something that will have a large impact in the Middle East for years to come.

Caleb Johnson is a third-year student with a double-major in international relations and history.

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Enrollment at Houghton: Past, Present, and Future Marketing Strategies

Courtesy of www.houghton.edu

As enrollment numbers gradually but unquestionably decrease, Houghton College turns to deliberate means of bringing in prospective students, particularly through marketing.  Jeff Babbitt, Director of Marketing and Communication, spoke in an interview about Houghton’s past, present, and future marketing strategies.

“For many years, I would say we relied on our reputation, being one of the top Christian schools in the country,” said Babbitt. “But as other schools have ris

en to that same level and competition has increased, that name recognition hasn’t been there… Maybe twenty years ago, if you were to ask someone to name the top Christian colleges in the country, Houghton would have been in the top five.  Now there might be twenty names of schools that are suggested, and Houghton might still be in there, but there are a lot of other schools that have risen to that sort of prominence.”

Babbitt, along with the rest of the Marketing Department, acknowledges that Houghton College can no longer rely on reputation alone.

He talked of different, more recent advertising techniques, saying, “We developed an advertising campaign just to get the word out about Houghton, both in the local area and our region of Western New York, and even beyond.  So we’re doing more advertising online, in some Christian magazines, on the radio, putting up some billboards on Route 86, just so people know we’re here and know who we are and where we are, so when they’re thinking of college, they think of Houghton.”

Houghton’s online presence in particular displays a recent change in marketing that appeals to the current generation and seems to successfully advertise the college.

Marshall Green, Public and Community Relations Specialist, said, “In my opinion, the internet has really changed how prospective students shop for college.  In the past, national magazines, word of mouth and alumni/family history might have been the key factors in college shopping.  I think now, students are more apt to search online.  To make the visits to schools that spark their interest and then make their decisions from there.”

Though advertising provides a method of creating awareness of Houghton College, it often serves as a means leading to a greater end of a larger marketing strategy.  Both Green and Babbitt agree that the more important factor lies in a person-to-person experience.

As Green said, “Our campaigns are not designed to have the prospective ‘make the decision’ but rather for awareness to create openness to start a conversation with the admission team.  Rarely, if ever, does a student make a decision based on an ad.  It is the personal contact that usually leads to the decision of which school to attend.”

Babbitt also focused on sending Houghton College to prospective students, through tactics like the website, word of mouth, and other advertising methods, rather than waiting for them to find Houghton on their own.  He said, “We’re trying to put Houghton in front of students where they already are.”

As private institutions may not represent the current trend, the Marketing Department’s primary goal is to remind prospective students why such an education might prove the best one for them.

Babbitt said concerning one underlying marketing technique, “I think what we need to do is to effectively tell the story of Houghton so that the differences between a private Christian education and a community college, a state college, or another type of college are very clear so that students see the advantages of coming to a place like Houghton.”

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Houghton Fire Hall’s Lack of Funding Leads to Ambulance Fees

The Houghton Volunteer Fire Department has recently begun charging a fee for ambulance rides to the hospital.

The fee comes as a result of decreasing financial support from the community and increasing cost burden on the department.

Courtesy of houghtonvfd.org
Courtesy of houghtonvfd.org

Over the past several years, the executive board of the department has been looking for ways to mitigate the costs involved with keeping an ambulance service up and running. The President and Ambulance Captain of the department, Mae Stadelmaier, said,“In order to provide the community with the proper standard of care, some form of billing needed to be implemented in order to cover the costs of the ambulance.” This is a move that reflects trends seen in other rural emergency service providers throughout the country. The board views this step as the only realistic and viable option to keep the ambulance service running in Houghton.

Beyond community donations, the department supports itself by holding fundraisers. These include a community yard sale, biannually, on Memorial and Labor Day weekends where the department charges $8 to vendors coming to sell their old things and hosts a community barbecue. It also holds an annual community dinner in the Houghton Wesleyan Church and sells Study Buddy Packs to Houghton students during finals week.

In spite of these fundraising efforts, there is still a deficit of income for the department. In the words of Captain Stadelmaier,“The costs of running an ambulance are a lot higher than many realize. The basic supplies needed to stock the ambulance are ridiculously expensive, not to mention the cost of the ambulance itself, as well as the maintenance, insurance, fuel, certifications, etc. The money we receive from donations and fundraisers has been decreasing over the years. We also don’t receive money from the tax payers for the ambulance as the ambulance is self-supported.”

The department worked to set the rates for the rides as low as they can be in order to lessen the impact on patients’ health insurances. The average price for a ride depends on the type of call and the level of care provided. Each ride to the hospital requires at least 3 volunteers, a driver and two EMTs, and 2 to 3 hours of work. Ultimately, the fee charged to the patient would include the costs of gas, medical equipment, and various other costs the department deals with, such as vehicle maintenance, which amounts to at least a few hundred dollars.

What complicates matters is that the cost of a ride to the hospital cannot be billed to an insurance company directly by the department. The bill that was formerly sent to the patient, from the medic, now gets included in the department’s bill. Then, the price that the patient pays is based on what their health insurance will cover.

There are also many costs that the department is preparing to pay for in the near future. “We need to be looking at replacing our ambulance in the next year or so, which is around $160,000 – $200,000, and with new state mandates will be getting a cardiac monitor, which can be up to $40,000. It is unlikely that donations and fundraisers alone will raise enough money to accomplish these tasks.”, says Captain Stadelmaier.

As the department faces such economic troubles, it is important to remember that it is part of a great community effort that goes beyond fees and bills. In the words of Kelsey Hancock, a Senior EMT volunteer, “We, the Houghton Volunteer Ambulance Service, are your classmates, your neighbors and your friends. We can’t do this alone; we need your support. We need more community members to join as EMTs to fill the gaps when students aren’t in Houghton. We need your participation in the fundraisers like the Spaghetti Dinner coming up on April 4th. And we need your encouragement and prayers. Our work can be tense, thankless and disheartening.”

Hancock concluded with gratitude toward the community of Houghton; she said “A simple word or note, or even praying when the siren sounds helps us to fight off exhaustion, discouragement and burn out. Thank you for caring about us and encouraging us. It makes a huge difference during our long hours of work.”

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Cardinal Bergoglio Made Pope Francis I

Habemus Papam: we have a Pope, the cardinals announced via white smoke pouring from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel.  The world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, and the population of the world at large, waited expectantly for the new Roman Pontiff to appear on the balcony of St. Peter’s.

Courtesy of guardian.co.uk
Courtesy of guardian.co.uk

Few observers in the days leading up to the Conclave were talking about Jorge Bergoglio.  There were other, more popular candidates, including the cardinals from Nigeria, Brazil, the Philippines, the United States and, of course, Italy.  The quiet, humble Argentinean archbishop was considered to have reached his zenith and begun to fade.

And yet there he stood on Wednesday, taking the name Francis I.  This name was perhaps as surprising as the choice of Bergoglio, since no pope has ever taken the name Francis.  The most famous Christian by the name was Francis of Assisi, and for various reasons no pope has wanted to be compared with Francis of Assisi until today.

Commentators are still wondering what this means for the direction of the Catholic Church.  Bergoglio is famous in Argentina for riding public transportation instead of an episcopal limousine.  He also decided to settle in a small apartment and cook his own meals, instead of living in the massive arch-episcopal palace and hiring staff.

When Francis was Provincial of the Jesuit Order in Argentina, he redirected Jesuit clergy away from liberation-theology-style political involvement and into parish work.  Nevertheless, he is also widely lauded for his efforts in social justice and poverty relief.  He is considered theologically conservative, especially on issues such as gay marriage and abortion.

Francis I is the first non-European pope since 741 and the first ever from the Western Hemisphere.  He is the son of an Italian railway worker, making him of European descent but raised in Argentina.  Approximately 40% of the world’s Catholics live in Latin America.

Francis takes over the Papacy at a time of deep uncertainty in the Catholic Church.  The English-speaking Catholic world has been rocked by multiple child sex abuse scandals in Scotland, Ireland and the United States.  The European Catholic Church is facing declining membership, while the church in the Global South is rapidly expanding.

There are also internal Vatican issues he will have to face as a relative outsider to the Roman Curia.  In the past few years, the Papal Butler has been on trial for leaking Vatican secrets.  A subsequent Vatican investigation uncovered an alleged blackmailing scheme involving possibly homosexual cardinals and factional infighting within the Vatican.  Pope Benedict is also supposed to have decided to retire upon reading the report of this investigation.

Pope Benedict XVI, whose retirement prompted the conclave that elected Francis I, appointed Ernst von Freyberg to lead the Vatican Bank on the day of his retirement.  The Vatican Bank has been under scrutiny by the EU since it uses the Euro but is habitually secretive.  There have been allegations of financial impropriety and bribery under Benedict’s leadership.

The new pope will be formally installed in St. Peter’s Basilica on March 19.

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Iran and Pakistan Inaugurate Natural Gas Line

On the 11th of March, Presidents Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan inaugurated the construction of a pipeline to take natural gas from Iran to Pakistan. The move, which is part of an effort to alleviate the power shortages in Pakistan, has drawn sharp criticism from the United States due to the Iranian involvement.

Courtesy of stateofpakistan.org
Courtesy of stateofpakistan.org

The pipeline has been under construction for some time already. Iran has reported that it has finished construction on its side of the border—some 1,150 kilometers of pipeline which run from the gas fields of southern Iran. Pakistan will complete the project by laying the remaining 750 kilometers in its own territory.

Highest among most concerns regarding the project is the possibility that Pakistan will be unable to afford the pipeline. Its main funding comes from two separate $500 million loans from the governments of Iran and China. The remaining cost will ostensibly be met by user fees.
Another concern is security. The pipeline will cut through the Balochistan region of Pakistan, which has been a hotbed of terrorist attacks in recent years, and attacks have shown a tendency to favor pipelines.

The pipeline risks incurring international sanctions due to the Iranian involvement in the project. The Pakistani government has insisted that their need for power outweighs their fear of international repercussions, as there are places within Pakistan which go for multiple hours without power every day, and the problem has been getting worse over time. The United States has suggested several other strategies to the Pakistani government in the past few years. The most prominent of these has been a pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan. However, the Pakistani government has insisted that production on such a pipeline would take too long, considering the extreme nature of their present power shortages.

Iran is beset by numerous international sanctions as a consequence of its pursuit of nuclear technology. Many governments have expressed concern that Iran is developing nuclear bombs. Ahmadinejad insists that the pipeline at least should not incur the sanctions, as it is not possible to build a nuclear bomb out of a gas pipeline.

The pipeline is a popular move in Pakistan as it provides an expedient solution to their incessant power shortages, and because it is in direct defiance of the United States to find an alternative. Although the United States provides millions of dollars of aid to Pakistan, its drone strikes and other efforts against al-Qaida and the Taliban in the region have left it highly unpopular among the Pakistani people.

Planning on the project started back in 1994, but it has faced numerous delays. The Pakistani and Iranian governments hope to have the pipeline complete by 2014, but as it has faced numerous setbacks in the past nine years and skepticism is high.

Although the pipeline itself has been planned for a long time, the timing of Monday’s ceremony was highly political. Pakistan’s elections will be held next month, and so the ceremony was likely motivated by a desire to kindle support by the currently-dominant Pakistani People’s Party (PPP). Its main rival is the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), which has ties to the strongly anti-Iranian government of Saudi Arabia. Because of the pipeline’s popularity, the PML-N will be put in the tight spot of appeasing its allies in Saudi Arabia or continuing the project and keeping its people happy.

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Houghton Students Tackle Independent Film Project

Courtesy of kickstarter.com
Courtesy of kickstarter.com

As a group of artists aspiring to learn and grow from the experience of a challenging project, Aaron Fitzgerald, Jordan Meeder, Andrew McGinnis, Graeme Little, Aubrey Thorlakson, and Nicolas Quigley came together at the beginning of the fall semester to begin creating a short film, called Telemachus.

Fitzgerald, the team’s director, said concerning the origin of such a project, “Jordan and I kind of had an idea about it, and had talked about it sort of seriously, sort of jokingly over the summer… but we didn’t do anything about it then… Then I sent out an email to him and a couple other people I thought might be interested, and we met, and that was it.”

Telemachus acts as a group undertaking for an advanced projects class, supervised by Professor David Huth, Visual Communication and Media Arts.  The project’s production time spans the entire 2012-2013 academic year.

“We’re all doing the equivalent amount of work that would be involved in an individual project… most projects would encompass more aspects of the medium, but wouldn’t necessarily do as in-depth kind of stuff,” said Graeme Little, director of sound.

To explain the plot of Telemachus, Fitzgerald said, “I think the easiest way for someone to understand it, without revealing too much, is that it’s like a loose, modern adaptation of the first three or four books of the Odyssey, and then the last two books of the Odyssey… I wouldn’t say it’s a parallel story, but more of a character study.”

When asked whether the individuals in the group had ever attempted producing something like Telemachus before, Fitzgerald said, “Nothing like this. We’ve all done smaller, more independent projects.”

Meeder, director of photography, said of the project as a whole, “I think it was a challenge to learn to work creatively with other people because none of us had ever done that before… I think it’s a good experience, but it’s definitely something you can’t really plan for… It’s been more of a learning experience than we ever expected.”

Fitzgerald went on to say, “I think one of my ideas for this project is to give people who I think are gifted or invested in a certain way a cooler platform to showcase their work on, the kind of thing a lot of other majors have, but the communication major doesn’t necessarily.”

Since Houghton lacks a specific film department, the group’s goal to complete Telemachus acts as an experience and essentially an experiment of their own.  As Fitzgerald said, “We didn’t do this because Houghton doesn’t have a film program; we just wanted to do something, and we thought that fact might be a good marketing platform.”

The team establishes its objective as principally gaining experience while deliberately challenging each of its members.

McGinnis, director of editing and effects, said, “I guess for me, the project is basically to get a large production under my belt, whether it turns out good or not.  I can just say I helped with a film that was over fifteen minutes long, and basically adding that to my portfolio and seeing what it’s like to work in a team atmosphere.”

Little’s hopes for Telemachus parallel those of McGinnis as well.  He said specifically, “I guess my goal for the project would be to best create something that… is not just my project anymore, but more like part of a larger project, which is like what any project is going to be in the real world.”
While the team hopes to eventually enter the film into film festivals in order to gain recognition, this aspiration comes second to the actual completion and experience of the entire project.

“I think our primary goal in this project is really just to learn and to try something that’s new and something that we’re not used to,” said Fitzgerald.  “I think a good way of thinking about is not in terms of, ‘We’re doing this so that we can be known,’ but rather something like, ‘A good goal for us would be trying to get into a festival,’ and that could help drive us to do something better than what we’ve done before, and do something new and different from what we’re comfortable with.”

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Congress Scrambles to Prevent Sequester

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers are busy trying to prevent the sequester, massive spending cuts totaling to roughly $85 billion this year and over $1 trillion over the next ten years, that will hit the federal budget on March 1.

Courtesy of ivn.us
Courtesy of ivn.us

Should lawmakers fail to prevent the sequester, it will lop off a good portion of discretionary spending for defense and domestic programs and will also affect some mandatory domestic spending (most notably Medicare.) No programs will be eliminated, but all will be considerably scaled back.

The sequester will also affect federal employment. According to a Washington Post article, about 800,000 employees at the Pentagon will be put on unpaid leave if Congress cannot obtain a solution to the sequester. Military members and their families will also face cuts to benefit programs. Economic growth in the United States is also expected to slow and unemployment will raise a quarter of a percentage.

The sequester is the result of the debt ceiling crisis in the summer of 2011. It was intended to be an incentive for Congress to come to an agreement to cut federal spending, however, no agreement was ever reached. Originally, the sequester was supposed to take place in the beginning of this year (during the fiscal cliff crisis), but Congress made a deal to prevent the cliff and the sequester was delayed for another two months.

Nobody in Congress is pleased with the situation; neither the Democrats nor the Republicans can agree on how to best prevent the sequester.

President Obama and the Democrats are suggesting that the best way is to increase taxes. Obama has advocated for closing tax loopholes and increasing tax rates for the wealthy. The Democrats in Congress are pushing for tax increases, spread out over the course of a decade, and they are also recommending other measures such as cutting farm subsidies and tax subsidies for oil companies.

Republicans, on the other hand, do not want to raise taxes at all and thus find themselves not able to agree with Democrat proposals. Republicans are also very concerned about defense spending being cut, more so than domestic spending, and are pushing for considerably large domestic spending cuts instead. In an article in the Wall Street Journal, Speaker of the House, John Boehner, wrote, “The president’s sequester is the wrong way to reduce the deficit, but it is here to stay until Washington Democrats get serious about cutting spending. The government simply cannot keep delaying the inevitable and spending money it doesn’t have.”

Overall, the sequester is another issue in the long debate over the size and role of the federal government, with the Democrats on the side of an expanded government and Republicans on the side of a smaller government. The results of the sequester that arise within the next week should be a test case to the larger debate. Hopefully, though, Congress will find a compromise to the sequester that is appealing to both political parties and will secure the future of American defense and overall well-being.