Sequestration: A national embarrassment

Great national tragedies and crises often inspire great art and music. We’ve seen memorials built, sculptures created and anthems written.

The World War II and Vietnam War memorials on the National Mall in Washington are great examples. They evoke the pain and suffering and the great achievements of the human spirit.

The new building rising at ground zero in New York similarly is evocative of sacrifice and national resolve. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks inspired Bruce Springsteen's pained, but still uplifting song, Rise Up.

My personal favorite is John Lee Hooker’s The Motor City is Burning, which he wrote after the 1967 riots in Detroit. You can feel his pain.

All of this brings me to our latest national tragedy: Sequestration.

What song would Springsteen write about this one? An update of Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer?

Perhaps we’ll commission the first two Little Pigs to build a monument out of sticks and straw.

I wish I had some great insight or prediction. I don’t. It looks like attention has turned to passing some sort of budget by March 27 that will satisfy sequestrations requirement of $85 billion in cuts for this fiscal year.

If we are very lucky, as in win-the-lottery lucky, a budget framework will get passed that will give us a way forward with some predictability and clarity.

Perhaps sequestration happening is for the best. Maybe we’ll get to put it behind us and move forward. Maybe it’ll just increase the partisanship and gridlock.

Don't get me started on Congress leaving town for the weekend. I guess it is easier to lay blame somewhere else when you are on your home turf, and not where you are supposed to be getting some work done.

We could see a repeat with the March 27 deadline because Congress is scheduled to go on its spring break on March 22.

I don't know. It's Friday and I'm fighting a cold, so maybe I'm just a curmudgeon today. Either way, I do know this is a national embarrassment.