Attention

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent our advertisers

Sunday, April 07, 2013

The Sequester Cuts Are Taking Effect All Throughout Our Nation

Starting this month, the Environmental Protection Agency will implement its first phase of employee furloughs. The agency's 17,000 employees will start receiving notices of when they'll be required to take time off without pay. Each worker could be forced to take as many as 13 furlough days, as the EPA struggles to implement the across-the-board budget cuts. According to the president of the National Treasury Employee Union, which represents about 2,500 EPA workers, “these employees are middle-class workers who are in the third year of a pay freeze. These furloughs will hurt their ability to pay their bills and serve the public. This is incredibly unfair to them and to the public.” So, in addition to making it more difficult to safeguard our food, the Republican austerity will mean EPA workers have less money to spend, and thus have a negative impact on our economy. The GOP must be thrilled with their handy work.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

They wouldn't have to take furloughs if government would cut back on give away programs.

Anonymous said...

This was Obama's idea to begun with. The Republicans just went along with his wishes. This article is simple bullship.

Anonymous said...

Given the fact that th EPA does not serve the public, I think this I awesome.

Anonymous said...

I'm thrilled by it, especially when it affects the EPA.

Anonymous said...

13 furlough days , get real , they do nothing anyway. they should get many more unpaid days off.

Anonymous said...

Im a small businessperson and I have been losing money the last 4 years.

Anonymous said...

I vote they should get 365 furlough days. They are another waste of tax payer money.

Anonymous said...

OH WELL!!!!

Anonymous said...

Let's just do away with the EPA altogether. That in itself would stimulate the economy.

Anonymous said...

Maybe not get rid of the EPA altogether but streamline it. Let each state have their own EPA and the fed EPA's function to be to divvy up the money to individual states.
Ideas such as cutting back on these fed jobs and giving the funds to each state were a Romney idea. Not only would it cut back on fed spending it would have created many more jobs for each state instead of having all the jobs centered in the DC area.