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Thursday, February 14, 2013
We remember Feb. 14, 2008
Boehner: Budget cuts are likely
Gayle Dubowski
By ANDREW TAYLOR and JULIE PACE
Catalina Garcia
Julianna Gehant
Ryanne Mace
Daniel Parmenter
FIVE YEARS LATER
The Associated Press WASHINGTON – House Speaker John Boehner said Wednesday it’s unlikely the Republican-controlled House and Democraticled Senate will prevent a wave of automatic spending cuts from beginning to strike the economy in two weeks. Yet he sounded hopeful about avoiding a partial shutdown of the government when a temporary spending bill expires next month. Cloistered in his Capitol office overlooking the National Mall, Boehner said in an interview with The Associated Press that he was skeptical of many of President Barack Obama’s plans, laid out the night before in the annual State of the Union address. Boehner voiced doubts about Obama’s proposal for taxpayerfunded help for pre-school education for all 4-year-olds, and would not commit to passing a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants, although doing so would be “somewhat helpful” to John members of his Boehner party as they seek Speaker of to regain support the House among Hispanics. “There’s no magic potion that’s going to solve our party’s woes with Hispanics,” he said. Boehner also refused to swing behind any of Obama’s gun-control proposals and said he opposed the president’s plan to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour. The Ohio Republican said he gets along well with Obama but admits their relationship hasn’t generated much in the way of results, pointing to two failed rounds of budget talks in 2011 and at the end of last year. Boehner is frustrated that spending cuts Obama signaled he would agree to in 2011 have been taken off the table since the election. “It hasn’t been real productive the last two years, and frankly every time I’ve gotten into one of these high-profile negotiations, it’s my rear end that got burnt,” Boehner said. “It’s just probably not the best way for our government to operate.” Obama stumped Wednesday in support of his minimum-wage plan, his calls for a manufacturing revival and his other State of the Union proposals in a trip to Asheville, N.C., where he said: “If you work full time, you shouldn’t be in poverty.” He takes his case to Georgia today and his hometown of Chicago on Friday, all part of his effort to build popular support for an agenda facing stiff resistance back in Washington. The immediate agenda, though, is dominated by $85 billion in automatic, across-the-board spending cuts – called a sequester in Washington-speak – set to slam the Pentagon and domestic programs over the coming seven months. Boehner said he has no plans to resurrect legislation passed by Republicans last year to block this year’s sequester.
Life paths changed
Kyle Bursaw – kbursaw@shawmedia.com
Joe Dubowski poses with a picture of his daughter, Gayle, on Wednesday in Carol Stream. Dubowski, who lost his daughter five years ago in the Northern Illinois University shooting at Cole Hall, has since obtained his master’s degree from NIU in applied family and child studies and has written the book, “Cartwheels in the Rain: Finding Faith in the Wake of the Unthinkable.” He is in the early stages of a second book.
Families, students reflect on years since NIU shooting By DAVID THOMAS dthomas@shawmedia.com
E
very time he started to fall asleep and heard the house creak, Eric Mace thought it was his daughter, Ryanne, coming back to their Carpentersville home from a date. It was always followed by the heartbreaking realization that it
couldn’t be her. “We had to get out of the house,” Mace said. “That was where Ryanne had grown up for a large portion of her life.” Life had led Ryanne to be among the approximately 120 students in an oceanography class the afternoon of Feb. 14, 2008, in a lecture hall in Cole Hall at Northern Illinois University
in DeKalb. Shortly after 3 p.m., numerous lives were changed by the person who emerged from a door near the classroom’s stage. That’s where former NIU student Steven Kazmierczak entered the room and opened fire. His act left five people – Gayle Dubowski, Catalina Garcia,
See REFLECTION, page A6
FIVE REMEMBERED • Memorial wreaths will be presented at 3 p.m. today at the Forward, Together Forward Memorial Garden next to Cole Hall.
INSIDE • Kate Schott reflects on how the tragedy still affects her. PAGE A6
Scholarship winners carry legacy of fallen Huskies the kind that comes in the aftermath of a gunman opening fire in a campus building and killing five DeKALB – Jacqueline Do stared students. at doors for the longest time. But as the weeks passed She could only wonder if ran- from that tragic Feb. 14, 2008, dom violence would walk through Do stopped staring at doors and the doors of her lecture halls dur- started opening them for a brighting her freshman year at Northern er future. Illinois University in 2008. She expected stress and changes during See SCHOLARSHIPS, page A6 her first year of college, but not
By JEFF ENGELHARDT
jengelhardt@shawmedia.com
Photo provided
Forward, Together Forward Scholarship recipient Caitlin Cavannaugh plays the harp Jan. 27.
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