The sequester cuts are being minimalized by people who say they won’t be all that bad.
That’s because Julie doesn’t have her own radio show. She’s not a talking head on cable TV. She doesn’t work for a special interest group that can buy political ads. Julie is a mom who’s been struggling since she had to drop out of college 31 years ago. Now, a new generation is facing a tougher adulthood because of politicians who dismiss the impact that a little cut can have on creating a lifetime of need instead of prosperity.
More about Julie's story, today's college work-study cuts and the latest figures on student debt in America after the scribble.
Julie and I were freshmen together at UW-Eau Claire. (As is often the case in such personal stories, I'm not using her real name.)I was able to go to college thanks to financial aid because my mom was trying to raise her kids based on tip money from waiting tables. Julie’s family was a little better off. Not much better off, but enough so that she didn’t get as much financial aid.
One of the first friends I made at college became the first friend to leave. I'll never forget sitting in her dorm room as she sobbed on my shoulder. Times had gotten tough for the family. There just wasn’t enough money in the bank and there wasn't going to be enough financial aid. President Reagan was talking about more budget cuts, so the writing was on the wall that college wasn’t in the cards for her. Neither was the well-paying job that a college degree was more likely to provide.
Something as basic as a work-study job would have provided enough stability for her to stay in school. Instead it was back to the small town of her birth where jobs were scarce and pay was low.
I still get Christmas letters from Julie. Each one is similar. The kids have come and gone. They're happy but constantly struggling. No vacations. No path to prosperity. How different that could have been with the education that would have led to a well–paying career in the field she dreamed of as a high school student. That higher income would have allowed her to pay back her financial aid many times over, creating new resources for more young people to attend college, get a good job and continue the cycle of success and prosperity.
Instead, people like Julie who get lower paying jobs end up needing more in tax breaks, Medicaid assistance for health care, and unemployment insurance when their jobs are lost to other countries. Julie could’ve been someone who paid into the system that gave her a chance; instead, she’s among the millions who need help to stay out of poverty because politicians turned their backs on her and on the evidence that shows investments in education do wonders for a nation's economic future.
All for the lack of a simple college work-study job that could have kept her in school.
Today, the critics can say that only 420 college students in Wisconsin will no longer be able to find work-study jobs because of today’s sequester budget cuts. But that’s 420 more Julie’s just this year. That’s 420 more people who are more likely to leave college, settle for lower paying jobs, face persistent unemployment and spend decades taking from the system instead of paying into it.
Nationwide, the sequester means the federal government will cease financial aid allotments to 280,000 students.
Some of them will leave college without a degree but with debt. Others will graduate, but only after taking on loans that will require decades to repay. This week, the New York Federal Reserve released figures on national household debt through the 4th Quarter of 2012. Student debt is now an astonishing $966 billion. That trillion dollars in debt is why Julie and a new generation of young adults don't buy new cars, new houses or pump more dollars into the local businesses that are wondering where all their customers have gone.
All this long-term economic damage is being done to placate the short-term demands of politicians who won’t touch a penny of favors for the very wealthy. As a result, a few hundred college students in Wisconsin who don’t have radio shows or lobbyists or press agents will quietly consider dropping out.
And this is just one small part of what the sequester is quietly doing to make it even harder for America's economy to recover.
The ideologues who are joyful today about these new budget cuts are right: there won’t be a massive public display of the sequester’s impact. But we’ll feel today's action in higher costs and higher deficits over the course of another generation as a grown up Julie realizes her efforts to send her own daughter to college are now going to fall short.