With federal departments already feeling the heat since across-the-board budget cuts took effect March 1st, Wyoming US Senator Mike Enzi says the mandatory cuts—known as the sequester—don’t go far enough.
The sequester, or automatic budget reduction across almost all federal programs, was meant to be an incentive for congress to reach an agreement on how to scale back the nation’s deficit. But the parties could not come to an agreement on how to achieve this and so now, those such as Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Dan Wenk are looking at cutting back on operations.
But Senator Mike Enzi says the 85 billion dollar reduction is a drop in the bucket.
“It’s an infinitesimal small part, it doesn’t even get us back to the 2008 spending levels before the TARP and the two big stimulus and the Dodd-Frank bill and a whole bunch of other big spending bills,” says Enzi, “We’ve got to go back to that level or our country’s really in trouble.”
Enzi has maintained that the federal government must reduce spending, but through prioritized cutting, similar to the way Wyoming reduced budgets this year, is his preferred approach.
“Everybody in every business in every government facility has some worsts that we can cut first and it would cut dramatically,” says Enzi, “What they’re doing is overplaying, overemphasizing to try to create as much pain as possible to reverse the trend and continue to overspend. That cannot go on.”
Governor Matt Mead says he would prefer more targeted reductions.
This year’s cuts will be the start of $1 trillion dollars in cuts over the next decade.
