Good medicine in long run

With pharmaceutical companies having to state the negative side effects of taking their products, drug commercials are often deadly comical.

They usually go something like this: If you cant sleep, take medication X and you will sleep like a baby. Warning, side effects may include loss of consciousness and bladder, heart and lung malfunctions. Death could occur with frequent use.

Interestingly, the acknowledged potential and serious negative side effects of drugs dont seem to adversely impact sales. People, it would seem, like their drugs and are willing to turn a blind eye to any potential negative outcome, until, of course, their lives become threatened by one of the serious side effects, and then they will likely look to sue the drug company.

Much like pharmaceutical companies, congressional Republicans over the past four years have been selling debt and deficit remedies with serious side effects for the economy and the American people, and that is why I am rooting for the March 1 sequestration deadline and the automatic spending cuts it triggers to come to pass, because as the old saying goes, who feels it, knows.

The sequestration deadline came out of the Budget Control Act of 2011. The act cut and capped discretionary spending by the federal government to provide about $917 billion in savings over 10 years.

In addition, the act tasked a joint committee of congressional members to create a deficit reduction strategy that would further reduce the nations debt by $1.2 to $1.5 trillion over that same period. A failure to agree on a plan, according to the BCA, would trigger the automatic spending cuts.

This is where we are now. The committee failed to agree on a plan, and the automatic cuts will begin on March 1, and just about everyone will be impacted.

According to a George Mason University study, The Economic Impact of Budget Control Act of 2011 on DOD & non-DOD Agencies, the approved caps and cuts in the law, beginning in January of this year, will reduce the nations Gross Domestic Product by $215 billion, decrease personal earnings of the workforce by $109.4 billion; and cost the U.S economy 2.14 million jobs.

The automatic cuts in the sequestration would reduce 2013 GDP growth by two-thirds and increase unemployment by 1.5 percent. According to the White House, some $2.3 billion would be cut from educational achievement and special-education programs, while hospitals would lose about $5.6 billion in Medicare reimbursements.

Security funding for overseas consulates and embassies would be cut by $1.2 billion. The military would also suffer major cuts. Already, the BCA is cutting defense spending by some $487 billion over the next decade. The sequestration would cut an additional $500 billion over the same time frame.

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Good medicine in long run