By Ben Velderman
EAGnews.org
    
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Why do Americans hate politics?
    
A pair of related news stories – from Minnesota and Washington D.C. – offers a big clue.
    
Minnesota’s Native American schools are being forced to make budget cuts due to “sequestration,” the popular term for the series of automatic spending reductions President Barack Obama and congressional leaders agreed to, in absence of a formal debt-reduction plan.
    
The Minnesota Star-Tribune reports that “school officials on reservations across the state have already slashed this year’s budgets in anticipation of sequester cuts, packing more students in classrooms, trimming class offerings and letting vacant jobs go unfilled.”
    
The news site explains that while most school districts are funded largely by state and local governments, schools on reservations and military bases are completely dependent on federal dollars “because they sit on tax-exempt land (and are) unable to raise funds from tax levies.”
    
Even as Native American school leaders are tightening their belts because of D.C.’s budget reduction plan, U.S. Department of Education officials “still found money to create a new six-figure” bureaucracy job, reports FoxNews.com.
    
The newly minted bureaucrat will be given a salary of $123,758 to serve as the executive director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African-Americans, FoxNews.com reports.
    
The well-paid government worker is tasked with “identify(ing) evidence-based best practices to improve African-American student achievement from cradle to career.”
    
One “best practice” would be to fully fund the Native American schools.  
    
The White House has previously created similar initiatives to serve Hispanics, Asian-Americans, Pacific Islanders, American Indians, Native Americans, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities, the news site reports.
    
It should strike Americans as odd that the federal government has money for all these seemingly redundant initiatives, but is forcing Native American schools to pinch pennies.
    
We believe federal officials want to use the “sequester cuts” to score cheap political points with voters. They believe that the more pain the average citizen feels from the budget deal, the less supportive he or she will be about trimming government programs.
    
It’s beyond despicable that our government officials would willingly diminish the quality of education Native American students receive in order to win a political debate.
    
Instead of leadership and problem solving, Americans are getting theatrics and gamesmanship.
   
It’s no wonder Americans hate politics.