Federal Government

At this time of severe cutbacks in government funding for food stamps, early childhood education and Meals on Wheels, some Maryland legislators are hard at work looking out for the welfare of one of the world's wealthiest corporations. Under a bill advancing in the General Assembly, the Lockheed Martin Corp. would have the taxes on its luxurious Bethesda hotel and conference center reduced by approximately $450,000 a year. An earlier version of the legislation also included a $1.4 million refund for the period since 2010.

Editor: I enjoyed the article about the staff of the Aberdeen Post Office supporting our troops. We all should be doing that. But, confined to a wheelchair, I cannot get into the Aberdeen Post Office because of the approximately 20 steps in front. I have to go through three large and heavy glass doors, that open into my face, in order to even buy stamps at the Abingdon Post Office. I understand that federal buildings don't have to abide by the Americans with Disabilities Act. No sense of compassion?

A Virginia-based company that provides information technology, management and other services to the federal government warned regulators that it might layoff 478 workers in Maryland, the state said Friday. Serco Inc., of Reston, Va., also told Maryland's Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation that it can't say whether the layoffs would be permanent or when they would occur. Serco's website said it serves the military, federal civilian agencies and the intelligence community.

Vehement opposition was all but universal at a public hearing in Westminster on Gov. Martin O'Malley's proposed gun control legislation. When the three members of Carroll County's delegation to the Maryland State Senate scheduled a Feb. 26 hearing to get input on the governor's legislation, the senators got a sample of the furor that O'Malley's proposals have ignited with at least some county residents. The conference room at the Best Western Motel, in Westminster, was already filled to capacity 20 minutes before the scheduled 7 p.m. start to the hearing, with the doors guarded by Maryland State Police and Carroll County Sheriff's deputies.

Sequestration is an extremely crude way to cut approximately 2 percent of federal spending. It is analogous to forcing a grossly obese person to lose a few pounds by not feeding him for a few days. On this issue, at least, it appears that Republicans and Democrats agree. So, one would think that the boys and girls who brought us the idea of sequestration (President Barack Obama, a Democrat, from whose White House the concept of sequestration arose, the Democratically-controlled Senate and the Republican-controlled House)

At the end of 1995 and stretching into January 1996, the federal government "shut down" because of an impasse between President Bill Clinton and House Republicans led by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The issue was increased taxes vs. less spending. Sound familiar? The government reopened when a bipartisan agreement was reached to balance the budget by 2003. Now the national debt is racing toward an unsustainable $17 trillion. This time around it isn't about closing government. It's about "sequestration," which President Barack Obama, the Democrats and their big media toadies are styling as economic Armageddon.

For the looming sequester cuts, the Republican and Democratic leaders sent lawmakers home armed with fact sheets about the $85 billion in across-the-board federal spending cuts due to start March 1, 2013. The sequester cuts are projected cuts for the future budget expenditures of $3.803 trillion as requested by President Barack Obama. If you do the simple math and divide $3.803 trillion ($3,803 billion) into $85 billion and multiply that number by 100, the answer is 2.235 percent in cuts.

As the clock ticks down on the sequester solution to the nation's budget mess, it's looking more and more like a descent into World War I trench warfare. The two partisan sides are dug in, declining to surrender inches of policy and ideological territory, while the political battlefield continues to be torn up around them. Behind all the figures on proposed Republican cuts and Democratic demands for higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans, the same basic argument remains over which much of the 2012 presidential election was fought: What is the proper size and role of the federal government in fulfilling the purposes for which the nation was formed, as succinctly laid out in the preamble to the Constitution?

Kudos to Sun investigative reporter Ian Duncan ("Maryland police seek federal help to take ill-gotten gains" Feb. 17) for exposing the high-handed and excessive practices of federal prosecutor Rod J. Rosenstein. He attempted to seize the home of the wife of an alleged (but never convicted) drug dealer who committed suicide. Add to this a chorus of loud boos for our federal government whose vicious, vindictive, and abusive actions are reminiscent of the practice of fascist governments who seized the assets of innocent people just because they could.

It would be ironic if Maryland, for the first time in the history of municipal bond ratings, lost its AAA status now. Thanks to a combination of spending restraint, tax increases and other reforms, Maryland's balance sheet is stronger that it has been in more than a decade. Gov. Martin O'Malley's budget proposal leaves nearly $1 billion in various reserve accounts, and the legislature stands poised to change the way it funds employee pensions to make the system more solvent. But thanks to the dysfunction in Washington, that's just what may happen.