Sequestration was established as a means to force the Congressional Budget Committee on Deficit Reduction to produce legislation by November 23, 2011 to further reduce spending by at least $1.5 trillion over 10 years.

The automatic sequestration process threat was intended to force the Congressional Budget Committee on Deficit Reduction to present a reasonable plan to Congress. Predictably, it was unable to do as intended, since they failed to even submit a proposal, yet alone to pass the required amount in cuts by the end of 2012. As a result, the automatic sequestration cuts were scheduled to kick in on January 2, 2013. As required, the cuts were divided equally between defense and various domestic spending programs.

However, on Tuesday, January 1, 2013, Congress approved a bill to avoid the so called “fiscal cliff”, which would have raised taxes on many Americans. However, the bill delayed the sequester, a series of automatic cuts in federal spending, for two months until March 1st.  Congress and the President were unable to come up with compromise legislation to avert the sequester; as a result, sequestration went into effect on Friday, March 1st.

Eugene Elander, who writes for the OpEdNews website, on March 2, 2013, wrote an Op-ed article entitled: Sequestration is Unconstitutional. And I agree with him 100 percent!

He said, “Indeed, this entire process of massive cuts to vital governmental activities and programs is not only an abomination, it is a violation of the Oaths of Office of Congress and the President.”

Elander then quoted the Preamble to our Constitution: “We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, to ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

He then proceeded to say that sequestration “clearly violates most clauses of that Preamble, and is therefore unconstitutional!”

Elander then took one clause at a time to demonstrate how sequestration was unconstitutional. He said the lack of funds interfered “with the administration of justice,” thus causing a premature release of those jailed and “awaiting judicial review” which interferes with the smooth functioning of the courts and prisons. Sequestration also hinders the ability of our many police, fire, and emergency departments to function optimally, “all of which receive substantial direct or indirect federal funds, to insure our domestic tranquility.”

Because of capricious cuts in our budgets, Elander further stated how sequestration has interfered “with our common defense against enemies foreign and domestic.” He mentioned many other additional programs that have been sufficiently damaged, like “unemployment benefits, reductions in child welfare, education, medical, and many other federal programs” that have been severely curtailed because of drastic cuts in budgets as a result of sequestration requirements

Clearly, using political sequestration as a political maneuver to stimulate political compromise would definitely be contrary to what our Founding Fathers would have envisioned as to how political parties should try to resolve differences. The concept of sequestration runs contrary to their concept of ‘public virtue’, which was one of the four Freedom Foundations that the writing of our Constitution was founded upon. Public virtue speaks to the need a democratic republic has for its members to voluntarily sacrifice personal benefit for something greater than themselves. It means political leaders and citizens alike must understand they are part of society. That society has needs that are greater than any individual’s or party gain.

Sequestration need not have occurred if public virtue would have been observed by members of both sides of the aisle. If they had been other centered and responded to their fellow American needs regardless of their political leanings, rather than being political party centered, they could have come to a reasonable political compromise. By using their private and public virtues, or their compassions and integrities, they would have responded to the then prevailing political needs of our country. In that way they would have been able to avoid violating the Constitutional tenets by allowing sequestration to be triggered by default.

The culmination of the violation of the Constitutional dictates over the years has recently resulted in one of the most egregious violations of our Constitutional rights with the arrival of sequestration by default. This all happened because the two political parties couldn’t come to an agreement on budget constraints so that Congress could come up with a viable budget bill that the president could sign, before Friday, March 1, 2013, when the dreaded deadline for sequestration came into effect. The reason it was so conspicuously bad and reprehensible was because the cuts that were made were so arbitrary and capriciously done. Some departments suffered greater cuts than others, without sufficient justification.