Obama signs sequester bill
Austerity has hit the United States as President Barack Obama signed into law a directive ushering in significant cuts to federal agencies' budgets and triggering the sequester that has been debated in Washington during the last several weeks. - In the White House on Friday, President Obama inked his name to the order, and with it signed off on automatic budget cuts that the country's political class say will save the United States over $1 trillion over the course of the next decade. In doing so, though, $85 billion will be erased from this year’s budget and a number of government departments will see their funding slashed immediately.
Barry Grey: Sequester initiates new austerity drive against US workers - Obama and the two corporate-controlled parties decided to implement the sequester because they concluded it was the most effective means of gutting social spending while whipping up a crisis atmosphere so as to wear down and dissipate mass popular opposition to attacks on Medicare and Social Security. The political theatrics surrounding the sequester follow a well-established “bad cop, good cop” pattern, in which the Republicans openly defend the wealth of the rich and propose the most extreme measures to loot society in their behalf, while the Democrats posture as defenders of the “middle class” and propose slightly less savage attacks. The pre-agreed result is always the same: a further turn to the right and an escalation of the ruling class’s war against working people.