Our formerly esteemed leadership in Washington, D.C., just isn’t getting what’s happening out here in Flyover Country.

Those automatic budget cuts are about to kick in and the impact will be real.

http://www.connectamarillo.com/news/story.aspx?id=866857

New Mexico, with a federal work force that is roughly twice the national statewide average, is going to see a significant job reduction once the reductions are ordered and carried out.

At this point, it no longer matters to me who’s to blame for this sequestration mess, which wasn’t supposed to happen back in 2011 when the budget law was enacted by Congress and signed by President Obama. What does annoy me to no end is the insistence by politicians and many in the media who keep blaming one side or the other on the failure to find a way to reduce the budget deficit. This clearly is a shared screw-up.

What has to happen now is for the bickering parties to set aside what got us here and for them to work out a solution to clean up the mess they’ve created. But everyone keeps standing on “principle,” which is code for cowering in fear of their respective political bases.

Democrats don’t want to touch Medicare or Social Security because it would offend the elderly who support them; Republicans don’t want to raise taxes on the rich, because that would offend those traditionally Republican voters. I believe the president has staked out the more defensible position, which is to reduce the deficit with a combination of tax increases and spending cuts. But he shouldn’t keep heaping all the blame on the other side when he, too, deserves to take the heat.

Frankly, I’ve had it up to here.

Effective governing requires compromise, which is not a four-letter word. We send these folks to D.C. to do our bidding. The last set of polls I saw said quite clearly that we want them to settle this matter. Is anyone listening?