It may be weeks before we see impact of sequester cuts in Washington

“You won’t see the world changing tomorrow.”

Senator Patty Murray is trying to put everything in perspective, and while it may take a few weeks before we see the big effects of the sequestration cuts – she says it will hurt communities.

It starts with the furloughs, she says.

“Particularly in some of our military communities,” Murray tells Seattle’s Morning News. “Our civilian employees being furloughed – that will have an impact on their family immediately, and an effect on the larger community because they will stop going to restaurants and buying things so it will affect businesses in their community and our overall economy.”

Murray is worried that these cuts will only hurt average middle class families, who now face bearing the brunt of the deficit.

“Really how we solve this isn’t by a fight on sequester or a fight on closing down the government. It is producing a ten-year plan at the end of the day and I’m working to try and build that on my committee right now. We’ll actually be voting on that in the Senate in a couple of weeks.”

The across-the-board spending cuts are all but certain, so in the meantime Republicans and Democrats in the Senate have staged a showdown designed to avoid public blame for any resulting inconvenience or disruption in government services.

The two parties drafted alternatives to the cuts, but officials conceded in advance the rival measures were doomed.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.