Real people suffering because of DC’s dysfunction

>>> all of this will cause a ripple effect throughout our economy. layoffs and pay cuts means that people have less money in their pockets, and that means that they have less money to spend at local businesses, and that means lower profits, fewer hires.

>> quite straight forward as the president made clear on friday that the sequester means less money in american people 's pockets and the ripple effects of the cuts will be strongly felt at the state and the local level and the impact on one state, pennsylvania , will be millions upon millions and almost $48 million less in education funding and putting 360 teacher and teacher aide jobs at risk, and between 60 and 90 million in hud and housing lost to sequester. to bring some perspective to the huge figures the mayor of allentown pennsylvania who brought doughnuts an brought them today and there they are in the control room, because i am not eat iing the doughnuts, but the producers are, and look, we love you because you bring the doughnuts, but you also bring us the sense of what all of this means to ordinary people on the ground, when we look at the sequester cuts of the state budgets, and the state budgets, and $1.3 billion including $1 billion to special education , and wic which is women and infant and children program which is 550 million cut, and also $15 billion decrease in the army, and $11 billion from the navy and $7.7 billion from the air force .

>> for us in allentown , it is going to be significant. like i said before the break, we have flu shots and we are estimating 5,000 kids in pennsylvania will not be p aebl to get flu shots, because of the funds cut for health and human services . meals on wheels, because of the nutrition programs and the seen seniors have to go out the fend for themselves. it is just basic.

>> and more will go hungry.

>> yes, go hungry.

>> and school funding $1.8 in allentown and 100 kids not going to head start, and it is real life commitments and devastating over the long term, and the cities are struggling from all of the cuts that have been made in congress. this is only going to make matters worse. i mean, millions upon millions upon millions of dollars in pennsylvania alone not going back into the economy, how does this help us?

>> well, that is the question. how would this help? the one that i think that just -- i am just beside myself today, but the fact that we are already reducing the debt is the part that is really sticking to me. the fact that we are already seeing over a reduction of the debt that we are not in a debt crisis and not only manufactured crisis, but the reason for the manufactured crisis is also manufactured. how is this sort of set of false information so widely available that people believe that we have to make these kinds of cuts?

>> so two things. first is lucy analogy. there is not a level of optimism, but there is also a fatigue out there, and you go on the talk about the cuts and the president talks about the cuts and how devastating it is going to be, and the public says, i am tired of it, and you say it every couple of weeks and what to believe, and that is why the public is not as engaged as the president thought they would be.

>> and also the name sequester does not help. it is a bad name.

>> armageddon needs to be in there somewhere.

>> yes, march 1 is armageddon might have been better.

>> yes, a focus groups of moms in kansas city and a lot of them in the same boat struggling economically, and they don't care, because the deficit is nothing of concern to them. they talk about the day-to-day live lives and how much it costs to fill up the gas tank , and i wrote about it the other day, one woman said, that i need to understand that people in washington understand my day-to-day life and not all of this ideological battle, because it is not going to pay for braces.

>> well, tom, we had an election and people did make a choice between with the different possibilities, and they picked the guy in the senate and the congress and even though we tried to keep it that way, they voted for the people to raise the taxes on the rich and not make major cutts.

>> so we had a national election where some of the issues were in fact before us, and we had a conversation, and debate and people went to the polls and we made a decision as a nation. but wait a minute, sequester. a fancy word for let's redo the priorities and meet behind the doors and have a forced, a forced set of cuts today that become the structure tomorrow. i want the dig down on one little fact here. we are talk abhousing in terms of money. the translation is that about 125,000 families that currently have housing choice vouchers are going to lose them. and half of those families have a member that is either a person with disabilities or is elderly, and as a policy choice, i would like people to raise their hands if they think that is a good priority to make that kind of cut.

>> that we will cut and balance this deficit that we are bringing down and doing it on the backs of those with disabilities and with the elderly.

>> that is right.

>> when i come back, i want to give you this more amy, because i want to ask you next not only what is going to happen next, but what happened to the outrage about the inequality that was part of the discourse that brought us to the election where i thought that we had made a choice about that, and in fact, we will talk about the one, the one thing that could save us ,