Sequestration Puts National Security At Risk

If you don’t have a clear sense of the fiscal cliff that is coming, you ought to take notice now.  Massive increases in taxes for everybody accompanied by deep cuts in services to those who are getting them lie just around the corner.  But what  may be worse will be the weakening of our national security.

Sequestration would also mean fewer FBI agents, border patrols, meat inspectors, disease trackers, Secret Service agents, prison guards and National Guardsmen for storms like Hurricane Sandy.

The difference between these cuts and the ones to the Pentagon: They fall on the domestic side of the equation, making them potentially more vulnerable in the larger debt battle between President Barack Obama and House Republicans.

“It’d be devastating. It’d really compromise our domestic security and our capacity to respond to emergencies and disasters like the hurricane we just had,” outgoing Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, told POLITICO. [POLITICO]