Cutting Deep: Schools and Sequestration
Remember the Super Committee? Formally known as the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, it was a bipartisan congressional committee established by the Budget Control Act of 2011 tasked with identifying $1.2 trillion in federal budgetary savings (through spending cuts, revenue increases and program reforms) over ten years.If you remember the Super Committee, you also remember that it failed. And the consequence of that failure is looming on the horizon: Sequestration.
Sequestration refers to the across-the-board budget cuts of approximately nine percent that are scheduled to take effect on January 2, 2013. It is a blunt instrument, applying budget cuts to all discretionary spending programs, from defense to education and medical research to housing, regardless of program effectiveness or return on investment.
The most widely discussed aspect of sequestration is cuts to defense spending. Almost immediately after the