Here is a Facebook post by my friend, Kari Moe:

“Words matter. Help me find a substitute for the word “sequester”. I have an alternative, but it isn’t short and simple. Every time I hear the word sequester I want to say “Oh, you mean the harmful budget cuts being forced by a minority (less than 50%) of members of Congress who think it is better to fire teachers, cops, meat inspectors and air traffic controllers rather than raise one cent from an oil company making record profits or ask hedge fund managers to pay their fair share?” Clearly my substitute does not meet the “short and simple” message criteria. What do you think is a message that says what the sequester means? Years of organizing for “single payer” instead of “Medicare for All” makes me have a sense of urgency about this.”

In looking up ‘sequester’ in Merriam-Webster.com, they suggested the following synonyms: cut off, insulate, seclude, segregate, separate, isolate, quarantine; confine, immure, incarcerate, intern, jail, lock

(up), restrain, restrict; abstract, detach, disengage, remove; detain, hold, keep.
Kari, are these any better? One could argue that Congress seems to have disengaged from the debate as they left town on Thursday, without resolving the issue that is of their own making. They seem insulated from the impacts the sequester is having, not just on government agencies, not just on federal employees, but on all the people and businesses that partner with government to make those things that Congress has legislated happen. One federal employee I know pointed out that while a one day a week furlough is a reduction of 20% in her gross pay, it translates into a 37% reduction in her take-home pay if she doesn’t change her reductions for pensions, etc. Think about the cascade effect of thousands of federal government families, all across the country, who will have less than a third of their regular paychecks to spend in their local economies. This is not just an abstract exercise in deficit reduction, as Kari has pointed out.

Others smarter in economics than I am have talked about why the issue of the deficit is not the financial issue we should most be concerned about as a nation right now (see Robert Reich’s February 25th post, “Why Obama Must Meet the Republican Lies Directly,” for example). After all, the nation’s financial system is not the same as our family checkbook, no matter how many times someone tells us it is. And simple mathematics tells us that having more people with jobs would mean more people were paying taxes, which would increase revenues, which would reduce the deficit.

I wonder whether Congress would have been able to make a decision about the budget if they had been sequestered, rather than applying the term inappropriately to across-the-board budget cuts. It isn’t as though the federal budget has come out of nowhere and landed in Congress’s lap, of course; each year they participate with the President in making federal spending decisions. The root of sequester, it turns out (again thanks to Merriam-Webster), is “from Latin sequestrare: to hand over to a trustee, from sequester: third party to whom disputed property is entrusted…” In this case the disputed “property”–the funds that enable government agencies (and not just federal government agencies either!) to provide services to people like you and me, the services that Kari highlights in her comments, have not been handed over to a trustee, or to a third party, to be returned when the dispute is settled; instead, they will just stop, or be reduced, with little apparent regard for the impact the loss of the services will make upon those who receive them. Is that just?

In the 25th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the Christian New Testament, Jesus tells a story to his disciples, just before he heads into the final days of his life:

“When the Son of Man comes in his majesty and all his angels are with him, he will sit on his majestic throne. All the nations will be gathered in front of him. He will separate them from each other, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right side. But the goats he will put on his left…Then he will say to those on his left, “Get away from me, you who will receive terrible things. Go into the unending fire that has been prepared for the devil and his angels. I was hungry and you didn’t give me food to eat. I was thirsty and you didn’t give me anything to drink. I was a stranger and you didn’t welcome me. I was naked and you didn’t give me clothes to wear. I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.” Then they will reply, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and didn’t do anything to help you?” Then he will answer, “I assure you that when you haven’t done it for one of the least of these, you haven’t done it for me.” And they will go away into eternal punishment…” (Matthew 25:31-33,40-46a, CEB)

For those of us who live in an era of performance measures and outcomes, these measures seem pretty clear to me. If we as a nation were brought before a jury of our peers–other members of the community of nations, for example–to account for ourselves in the current budget discussions, how would we fare in a court of justice that had as its standards these measures of Jesus? Forget the court–what if it was time for our annual performance review? Would we be able to demonstrate high performance against these measures? Would we even get to adequate, much less satisfactory or outstanding?

In the Gospel of Luke, a lawyer asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life (what you might describe as the ultimate performance bonus). Jesus responds by putting him on the spot in the best Socratic fashion: “What is written in the law? How do you interpret it?” The lawyer’s response: “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your minds, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus assures him he has answered correctly: “Do this, and you will live,” he says. But the lawyer, wanting to prove that he was right, asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”

Jesus responds with the story that we now call the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37). His point is that our neighbors are the people we least expect, perhaps the people we most do not want to love as ourselves. When Jesus asks the lawyer who was the neighbor among the three persons who encountered the man beaten and left by the side of the road, the lawyer grudgingly replies, “The one who demonstrated mercy toward him.” Which raises the question for me, who is demonstrating mercy in the present debacle that is the sequester? Who is prepared to love their neighbor–or even their enemies, as Jesus will also command–as themselves? Can Republicans come together with Democrats? Can the President with Congress? Can they come together to figure out what is best for the nation, rather than the best for their political viewpoint? And even more importantly, can they recognize that the dollars they’re fighting over are not some abstract thing, but are people and communities and food for hungry families, clean water to drink, medical care for those that are sick, and a justice system that works for everyone, not just those who can afford it?

I hope so.

Kari, maybe the words we need to be advocating for are compassion, and justice, and mercy–the opposite of what seems to be in play with ‘sequester’?

Natalie K. Houghtby-Haddon, Ph.D. is Associate Director of the GW Center for Excellence in Public Leadership in Washington, DC. She is also an ordained United Methodist minister, having served local churches in southern California before coming to DC. She is the author of Changed Imagination, Changed Obedience: Social Imagination and the Bent-Over Woman in the Gospel of Luke.