KAPA‘A — As Congress gets ready to reconvene Monday to discuss “the sequester,” Hawai‘i Rep. Tulsi Gabbard visited her constituents across Hawai‘i, including a stop on Kaua‘i, to explain the situation and gather stories about potential impacts on families. “It’s
KAPA‘A — As Congress gets ready to reconvene Monday to discuss “the sequester,” Hawai‘i Rep. Tulsi Gabbard visited her constituents across Hawai‘i, including a stop on Kaua‘i, to explain the situation and gather stories about potential impacts on families.
“It’s not going to be pain-free, but we have to be responsible in how we do this so that those who are most needy, those middle-class families and small businesses are not bearing the brunt of the consequences of reducing our deficit if sequestration occurs,” she said Saturday while visiting Kaua‘i for the Boys and Girls Club of Kaua‘i Youth of the Year luncheon.
According to a report from the Senate Appropriations Committee, letting automatic across-the-board budget cuts go forward March 1 would cause Hawai‘i to lose enormous funding for not just the military, but also in education, public safety, health care and job training.
“It’s difficult to wrap your mind around because it is so extensive within the military-related spending,” Gabbard said. “But when you look at other federal spending, that would affect education, low-income housing, Head Start programs, section 8 vouchers, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance program, it will impact so many different areas that are very real and will effect real people and real families in Hawai‘i.”
At the annual National Governors Association meeting this week, both Democrat and Republican chief executives expressed pessimism that both sides could find a way to avoid the massive, automatic spending cuts, pointing to the impasse as another crisis between the White House and Congress that hampers their ability to construct state spending plans and spooks local businesses from hiring, according to the Associated Press.
Hawai‘i Gov. Neil Abercrombie, a former congressman, said the cuts could lead to 19,000 workers laid off at Pearl Harbor, site of the surprise attack in 1941 that launched the United States into World War II.
Today, Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam supports Air Force and Navy missions.
“That will undermine our capacity for readiness at Pearl Harbor. If that doesn’t symbolize for the nation … what happens when we fail to meet our responsibilities congressionally, I don’t know what does,” Abercrombie said.
Gabbard said the potential impacts should these “arbitrary, across the board cuts occur in Hawai‘i, it will be devastating.”
She noted that 18 percent of the state’s economy comes from military dollars, including here on Kaua‘i with operations at the Pacific Missile Range Facility.
“It would affect local jobs, department of defense and civilian jobs,” Gabbard said, adding that 11,000 jobs could be lost while there is a potential for 18,000 furloughs statewide.
She said the is not just “a theoretical debate, a political debate” and that she is “pushing for and encouraging my colleagues and leadership to sit down and take action to prevent the sequester.”
Gabbard said she wants to get rid of the looming fight so that “real conversations” can occur.
“I’ve talked with Department of Defense officials and talked with other agency officials and everyone agrees we have to cut back,” she said. “Anything is possible, but the probability is not looking good.”
In Hawai‘i, the sequester would also slash almost $3.3 million from Title I, the largest federal-funded education program in the United States, meaning schools would be left struggling to pay for teachers and tutors.
Critical grants for public safety would be cut back by more than $200,000, potentially leaving first responders understaffed and working without necessary, critical equipment during times of emergency.
“Yet again, Republicans in Congress are threatening to throw the economy back into recession unless Democrats agree to benefit cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid,” said Randy Perreira, president of the Hawai‘i AFL-CIO in a release. “They are willing to allow deep across-the-board cuts that hurt working families to go into effect rather than close wasteful tax loopholes and demand corporations and the richest 2 percent pay their fair share. We need to invest in our economy and our people by creating more jobs, not cutting them. Congress must stop protecting corporations and the richest 2 percent and cancel the sequester immediately.”
Gabbard said though, that the blame game doesn’t help anyone at this point and has gone on for far too long.
“My mission and goal of being here in Hawai‘i this week is to communicate to folks what these impacts could mean and hear their concerns and carry those concerns and stories back to Washington, because this is not a political issue, it’s a people issue,” she said. “It’s understanding families who hired us to do a job and we have to take action.”
