Job losses and paycheck cuts coming if sequester continues

The sequester is affecting services many of us depend on, from longer waits in airports for those who can afford plane tickets to housing and nutrition assistance cuts for those who struggle to avoid homelessness and hunger. It will have huge effects on jobs, too. Whether it's furloughs or employment benefit cuts or educational funding cuts that force teacher and school staff layoffs, millions will lose part or all of their income thanks to sequestration.

• Parks, including the National Mall, will have to cut maintenance and other staffing through furloughs and cuts to overtime and seasonal jobs:
  

  At the National Park Service, the only thing remaining are people, a spokeswoman, Carol Johnson, said. 'It's visitor service. We educate the public. There's nothing left to cut.'

• The Food Safety and Inspection Service says much the same thing: Personnel is the only thing left to cut.
  

  'We can't just stop programs,' Mabry said. 'People are saying, 'Why can't you just send home all the personnel people and not the inspectors?' Well, there's no way to get from here to there without that.' [...]

  The agency is on track to lose more than $50 million from its $1 billion budget. It must shrink the budget over the seven remaining months of the fiscal year. That means a hit of closer to 9 percent. Because inspectors make up 87 percent of the food safety budget, furloughs are the best option.

• Education funding cuts could lead to major job losses in the schools:
  

  'We anticipate that over 50,000 educators across the country could be losing their jobs through all of this,' said Mary Kusler, government relations director at the National Education Association (NEA). Public school teachers have already been hit extremely hard by state and local government austerity, losing more than 300,000 jobs since 2009.

Multiply that across every federal agency, into every airport in the country, into meat processing plants where production is slowed because the safety inspectors have been furloughed, and it becomes clear why the sequester is expected to be a drag on economic growth. And Republicans are willing to create that economic damage just to protect corporations and the wealthy from losing a few of their tax loopholes.