Did you know that federal agencies have to buy some goods from non-profits that hire blind or disabled workers? Well, they do, and that means that sequestration is
bad news for blind people, as the federal government buys less.
The Cincinnati Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired announced on Thursday that it would be letting 28 of its 65-member staff go with sales orders from the federal government drying up. The group works predominantly with the General Services Administration to produce tape products. [...]
Greensboro's Industries for the Blind, which gets 98 percent of its business from the federal government, recently laid off 40 workers because of a slowdown in contracts with the Department of Defense. But the president of the group, David LoPresti, told The Huffington Post that he expects to bring those workers back on board. He has secured several additional contracts, mostly for t-shirts and other military garments, since he made the announcement.
Finding a new job after being laid off is hard enough for anyone. Being blind has to make it quite a lot harder. Will this join
cancer treatments for Medicare patients and
small air traffic control towers on the list of individual cuts that Republicans who supported the sequester will decide is an outrage that has to be addressed not by ending sequestration overall but by whining about the president or introducing a specific bill patching this specific cut? Or do blind people not merit Republican pretend-outrage?