Before shutting down more Washington tourist attractions to prove how harsh the sequester is going to be, President Obama might take a cue from the way Mayor Carty Finkbeiner responded to the the fiscal crisis that occurred on his watch in 2009.
The Obama administration this week cut off tours of the White House, blaming the automatic spending cuts that took effect because of his own and Congress's failure to agree on a long-term deficit-reduction plan.
And this is a crisis that was created by the President and Congress.
In 2009, the city was slammed by a sudden downturn in income tax revenue because of the worldwide financial crisis that occurred the year before.
In April, 2009, Finkbeiner organized volunteer mowing of the city parks and boulevards and personally got behind a heavy duty grass mower that, frankly, looked a little scary in the hands of an amateur.
The mayor said he didn't believe in letting the city become less attractive to score political points.
"I don t want to dramatize how serious the debt is. That was done in 1979-1980-1981 when we allowed grass to grow in our parks without cutting. It was done in part to get passage of the three-quarter-percent levy," Mr. Finkbeiner said at the time.
He took responsibility and apologized for the tall grass, and vowed, "I will use every means available to us to make sure that our parks, and our cemeteries, and our boulevards are not neglected despite our economic challenges."
By the way, Finkbeiner was a huge supporter of fellow Democrat Obama 's re-election, c0-chairing the campaign fundraising effort in northwest Ohio.
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