Sequester Budget Cuts

[Deleted]

From the Los Angeles Times....

Deficit-deluded tea party Republicans love the sequester scheme

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Wednesday, February 27, 2013



THE delusions of Tea Party Republicans are about to create a lot of misery for America. The "sequester" — the drastic set of budget cuts formerly known as the "fiscal cliff" — seems very likely to go into effect at the end of this week due in no small part to the fact that hyper-conservative lawmakers, such as Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, actually think it's a pretty swell idea.

Their obsessive and mistaken belief that the federal deficit is the greatest threat to the republic is leading them to block any compromise with Democrats that would delay or repeal the looming budget reductions.

They want government to get smaller and smaller, even if the cuts will come too quickly and slash too indiscriminately. The supreme absurdity of their position is that this could so damage the American economy that federal revenue will drop and deficit reduction will become even harder to achieve.

The Tea Party folks may be sincere, loyal citizens, but their notions about how the economy works are exactly that: mere notions. Their core notion is that government needs to do nothing more than get out of the way of business in order for the economy to boom and bloom.

In an 18th century world or in the fiction of Ayn Rand that might have worked, but the reality is different. The United States became the world's biggest economy in the post-World War II years for many reasons, but one big reason is that government played a pivotal role.

Government built infrastructure like the interstate highway system, paid for crucial research and development, ran the space program, supported a massive military and played referee in the financial realm so that those who wanted to rig the system could not do it as easily as they had in the 1920s.

When, in his first inaugural address, Ronald Reagan famously said government is the problem, not the solution, he established the Republican mantra that has not changed in all the years since. It was a clever bit of rhetoric, but it has turned too many Republicans into economic simpletons. Government can, indeed, be part of the problem sometimes, but it cannot be left out of any solution to the challenges of our complex modern economy.

Pete Peterson, President Nixon’s secretary of Commerce, has campaigned for years against rising deficits and has earned the ire of liberals who think his insistence on restructuring Social Security and Medicare is too extreme and unnecessary. Yet, even Peterson, in an interview on public radio's "Marketplace" on Tuesday, said many of his fellow Republicans are crazy to think the sequester cuts are a smart idea.

Peterson said the deficit problem is long-term and must be dealt with comprehensively through spending reductions, entitlement reforms and revenue increases, a.k.a. taxes.

What should not happen, Peterson insisted, is a governmental retreat from investing in America’s economic future through funding of things such as education, infrastructure and basic scientific research. Of course, to the Tea Party Republicans, such talk is heresy.

There is one other fallacy that anti-government conservatives cling to, and they talk about it so much that they have convinced most of the people in the country it is true. That fallacious premise is that President Obama has done nothing to reduce the federal deficit. In fact, the deficit has shrunk as a percentage of GDP every year since Obama took office. Check the numbers. Look it up. We are actually on the right track!

But that will not last long if hundreds of thousands of government workers are furloughed, if military bases are closed, if the air traffic control system is disrupted or if many other important government services are crippled. That will start happening on Friday when the sequester kicks in. If it does, we will have a bunch of deluded deficit hawks to thank for it.

www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-deficit-deluded-20130226,0,2959440.story

[geopol]

Could this be the beginning of another revolution? America really on the skids?

[Deleted]

Blame those rightie Republican/Tea Party retards.



Anyway, defence budget cuts will mean less money available to spend on warmongering.

[Salem]

Cutting things like meals on wheels? I like many things about America. But I think there are so many other savings that can be made in other areas, for example (and I realise this is once in 4 years) the pomp and ceremony surrounding the 'Inauguration'. What an obscene, ridiculous, grandiose, bombastic and overly-nauseating display of waste. Our PM is sworn in, in an office with her or his staff and immediate family and then thats it. Its not even televised, a 40 sec media grab on the nightly news that night. No one cares. Its just paperwork. And all the expensive high price singers at their sports games, not just for the big games, but for the small ones as well. And all the Presidential Gala dinners. Having like, 300 police and cavalcade following the President on the road when he is on the move. There is is just so much incredible waste in many other areas in the states. Maybe all combined it may not be enough to break even or more, but a least it would make a sizeable dent in jobless numbers and in the economy.

[Deleted]

From the Los Angeles Times....

With sequester, Congress goes over the cliff and off the rails

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Tuesday, March 05, 2013



WITH United States Congress has reached a new low in callous disregard for the people of this country. One would hope a price would be paid for failing to stop the budget sequestration before dramatic cuts in programs began to kick in, but given the realities of our political system, only common citizens, not politicians, are likely to suffer as a result of this mess.

Unwisely, during one of the manufactured budget crises of 2011, President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner agreed that the penalty for failing to reach a comprehensive budget agreement by the end of 2012 would be automatic, across-the-board budget cuts. Their foolish assumption was that no one would be stupid enough to let such a thing happen. As it turns out, plenty of our elected officials are, indeed, that stupid.

Much of the stupidity — though certainly not all — has been exhibited by the most conservative members of the Republican caucuses in the House and Senate, the so-called Tea Party Republicans. So intent are they on whittling government down to the size it was back in the days of McKinley and the Robber Barons that even the prospect of major cuts in the defense budget did not phase them. Other steep cuts in dollars for scientific and medical research, education, hunger programs, national parks, infrastructure maintenance, food inspection, airport security and a host of other small but useful governmental activities caused them zero concern since, in the tea party version of reality, all those things are simply more big, bad government.

In the last few days, I’ve seen anecdotal evidence about how the cuts are going to hit real Americans — a nephew who has a new job with an import/export firm anticipating a drop in business because federal inspection and approval processes will be stalled; a first-year teacher who may not get a second-year contract because of federal education funding cuts; Navy shipyard workers facing furloughs and small businesses in the surrounding communities losing customers as a result; a research university retrenching and cutting jobs because federal funding will no longer be there. In most communities throughout the country, such stories will be repeated thousands of times in the coming months if nothing changes in Washington.

Too ignorant to understand the damage they are doing, zealots on the right are congratulating themselves for being so bold and principled. Yet, as irresponsible as Republicans have proven to be, Democrats are not without blame. There are more than a few on their side of the aisle who are pleased that the military budget has taken a big whack. Never before would Republicans have allowed such a thing to happen, so Democrats who have long wanted to reduce the Pentagon’s bloated budget see this as a bit of a gift.

The problem is that cutting in this manner, indiscriminately and with no focus, is simply a terrible idea. The jobs that will be lost among the military’s civilian employees will boost the unemployment numbers, just like any other jobs. Communities that are most severely affected by reductions in defense programs will suffer just as much as communities that lose factories.

If the federal budget is going to be reduced and reallocated, the task needs to be done intelligently and with the full understanding that federal dollars fertilize every aspect of the U.S. economy. Republicans and Democrats in Congress should have been in high gear trying to avoid this self-inflicted damage, but both sides looked way too relaxed as the budget ax fell.

www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-congress-off-the-rails-20130304,0,3062685.story

[Deleted]

The RW will sacrfice the country out of spite....just when things were looking good for the American economy to turn aroung with the Dow up pre GFC levels.....they will kick it the guts.

Dead shits..

[Deleted]

I wonder why Buzzy-boy (who started this thread) chucked all of his toys out of the cot and deleted all his posts to this thread, including the post which began the thread? Is Buzzy-boy losing the plot? One really has to wonder!

[Deleted]

From the Los Angeles Times....

Hoping to break the stalemate, Obama takes GOP senators to dinner

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Thursday, March 07, 2013



PRESIDENT OBAMA had a dinner date Wednesday night with a dozen of his worst enemies, thus proving that the governmental stalemate in Washington, D.C., is driving him to unusual acts of political creativity — or desperation.

The president personally picked up the tab for the private dinner at the Jefferson Hotel, and the guests were all Republican senators, including John McCain (Arizona), Lindsey Graham (South Carolina), Tom Coburn (Oklahoma), Bob Corker (Tennessee), Kelly Ayotte (New Hampshire), Dan Coats (Indiana), Richard Burr (North Carolina), Mike Johanns (Nebraska), Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania), Ron Johnson (Wisconsun), John Hoeven (North Dakota) and Saxby Chambliss (Georgia).

Coming out of the hotel after the two-hour meal, the senators had nothing but nice things to say about the gathering. Most of the dinner discussion was about the deficit and budget issues, one unidentified senator told CNN. That might make a few Democrats uneasy, fearing Obama may be opening the way to a deal that will trade away too much, but senators who supped with the president indicated there was still a long way to go before anyone gave up anything. Nevertheless, one of the senators told CNN he and his colleagues saw a sincerity in Obama they had not perceived before and the result was “a very positive meeting.”

Next week, Obama is scheduled to have lunch at the Capitol with more GOP senators, and he is seeking a meeting with House Republicans as well. This is a significant shift for a president who, throughout his first term, was criticized by inside-the-Beltway critics for preferring cozy dinners with his family to cocktails with power brokers.

Personal contact has always been essential to getting things done in Washington and is even more important when governmental power is divided. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan had to make deals with a Democratic Congress. In the 1990s Bill Clinton had to work out compromises with a Republican House. Reagan and Clinton were both champion schmoozers. But those were the days when there was still a functioning center in the House and Senate. Now, Democratic and Republican lawmakers are so deeply divided and rigid in their ideology that it often appears they can barely stand to be in the same building, let alone at the same dinner table. In a political system already designed to divide power, the lack of people willing to reach out, give ground and cut deals has meant that Congress and the president have lurched from one confrontation to the next with little useful work getting done.

Criticized for the failure to come up with a budget bargain before automatic across-the-board budget cuts kicked in, Obama said at a recent news conference that he was “not a dictator” and could not just force Congress to do his bidding. If not a dictator, neither has he proved to be a savvy, hands-on politician in the style of Lyndon B. Johnson, Reagan or Clinton. The days when LBJ slapped backs, twisted arms and brokered deals with a few powerful committee chairmen are long gone, of course, and that makes a charm offensive less effective than it once would have been. But nothing else is working — not even taking his case to the people — so Obama is giving charm a try.

Can hosting a dinner or showing up for lunch with Republicans do that much to soften the hard line they have taken on raising taxes on the rich or tampering with the wide-open market for firearms? It seems unlikely. On the other hand, at least some Republican lawmakers may have grown weary of appeasing the most vociferous loudmouths in their party. They may actually want to start governing again, too.

Disillusioned voters have run out of patience with elected officials in both parties who claim to speak for the American people but who have proved incapable of sitting down and speaking to each other. Obama’s dinner diplomacy is a very small but positive sign that do-nothing politicians may at last be ready to do something.

www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-obama-dinner-20130306,0,3334287.story

[Deleted]

From the Los Angeles Times....

Barack Obama dining with 12 Republicans is an Aaron Sorkin scene

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Friday, March 08, 2013



PRESIDENT OBAMA's date with a dozen Republican senators has so caught my imagination that I cannot quite let it go. The idea of the president picking up the tab for dinner in a swanky Washington restaurant for 12 of his most staunch political foes sounds like an improbable plot twist straight out of “The West Wing.” But, as I learned long ago, political reality is almost always more weird and fascinating than political fiction.

In my mind, it’s easy to visualize the film version of the dinner. Low lights casting a golden glow on shadowy faces as the camera moves along the table: Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina senator with his boyish face sinking into jowls; Saxby Chambliss, the beady-eyed, white-haired Georgian looking slightly appalled to be dining with a Kenya-born socialist; Tom Coburn, with his spiky hair, boxer’s nose and Oklahoma common sense that keeps him from pandering to the lunatic fringe of his party; all the other senators sitting tense and alert as they look toward their host. Obama would have to be seated at the head of the table with John McCain, the man he defeated for the presidency, uncomfortably placed at his right. That dramatic juxtaposition would be impossible to resist — unless McCain were in the farthest seat at the other end of the long table, still seething over his lost place in history.

Just add the expository, rapid-fire Aaron Sorkin dialogue and you'd have an instant HBO hit.

I reviewed the political implications of the dinner in Thursday’s Top of the Ticket post, pondering whether Obama’s charm offensive had any chance of breaking through the virulent partisanship that has stalled our government since Republicans took back the House of Representatives in the 2010 congressional election. Today’s cartoon would have been a good match for that column, but I didn’t dream it up until late Wednesday night. Sometimes inspiration fails to keep pace with breaking news.

The cartoon that did run with the column — the double-genie cartoon, caricaturing the ideological rancor between U.S. Senate leaders Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid — shows where I started the day on Wednesday. That drawing was completed and my column was half done when I heard about the Obama dinner. Through a couple of rewrites, the column became less about political polarization and more about the president’s charm offensive. By 10:30 p.m., I realized the cartoon and column were no longer a precise pairing, and I thought about starting over. By 11 p.m., I had the “arugula” idea, but was not too anxious to stay up until 3 a.m. to get it done.

Instead, we have today’s follow-up.

To be completely candid about my creative process, I should mention I had one other dinner-related cartoon in mind — a Last Supper scene with Obama at the center in Jesus’ seat, flanked by the 12 senators. Obama would say, “One of you will betray me,” and one of the senators would reply, “Only one of us?!”

It’s a pretty funny idea, but I opted for the simpler vision of an arugula eater dining amid a dozen red-meat devotees. But don’t be surprised to see the Last Supper concept turn up somewhere. I hate wasting a good metaphor.

www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-obama-dining-20130307,0,6746754.story

[caskur]

hey ktj.... why don't you write your own scrollbombs instead of cutting and pasting someones elses work... ya wanker!

[Deleted]

Mar 9, 2013 10:38:10 GMT 10 caskur said:

hey ktj.... why don't you write your own scrollbombs instead of cutting and pasting someones elses work... ya wanker!

Hey HOE.....why don't you piss off?

[Deleted]

From the Los Angeles Times....

Sequester shenanigans dug Congress into a deeper hole

By DAVID HORSEY | 8:03AM - Thursday, March 21, 2013



THIS WEEK, realizing that government actually does do some things people like, senators in both parties tried to undo some of the damage wrought by the sequester/fiscal cliff debacle. Their efforts were quickly undone, however, by the chronic dysfunction of the United States Congress.

Attempts were made to restore White House tours, maintain an efficient number of meat inspectors, keep up sane staffing of airport control towers, provide tuition help for members of the armed forces, undo cuts to military maintenance and take back many of the other across-the-board cuts that came about when the lawmakers failed to avert the $85 billion in automatic reductions that kicked in on March 1st. In the end, though, fixing even the most idiotic cuts was put off so that yet another irresponsible political move could be avoided: shutting down the government.

A stopgap spending bill must be approved by March 27th to keep the federal government in business. The fixes to the sequester cuts came in the form of more than 125 amendments that senators wanted to tack onto the spending measure. Squabbling over all those changes would have thrown 125 wrenches into the legislative machine and pretty much guaranteed a government shutdown.

For once, good sense prevailed and most of the amendments were withdrawn. However, that still leaves the mounting wreckage that is being created by the sequester. Furloughed defense workers, air travelers, poor people getting food assistance, families visiting national parks, students needing loans and more and more Americans who benefit one way or another from government services will feel increasing pain and aggravation the longer lawmakers put off developing a more intelligent budget plan.

Still, there is modest good news. The combination of the tax increase for wealthy people that arrived on January 1st, the March 1st budget cuts and the reductions made by President Obama and Congress in 2011 has resulted in a $4-trillion reduction in the deficits that lie ahead in the next 10 years. Both Obama and House Speaker John Boehner say that, for now, the deficit is not the looming problem that it was.

This good news could be better, though. Yes, our leaders in Washington achieved the goal they set for themselves, which was to cut the borrowing by $4 trillion. Unfortunately, they did not do it in a way that is smart or sustainable. Across-the-board cuts are imprecise. They hit the parts of government spending that are least problematic and least expensive while doing nothing about the two entitlement programs — Social Security and Medicare — that are only going to gobble up more and more of the budget in the years to come.

Plus, a big chunk of that $4 trillion was the product of two gimmicks gone awry. The first gimmick came back in 2003 when the Republican-controlled Congress passed the so-called Bush tax cuts. Knowing that such a huge drop in tax revenue would very likely drive up the deficit, lawmakers put an expiration date on the tax reduction. That expiration date came on January 1st this year, which was the only way Obama was able to wrest a tax hike on the rich from the anti-tax Republicans who found themselves boxed in by their own deadline.

The second gimmick was the ticking time bomb of the across-the-board cuts that Obama and Boehner agreed to in 2011. At the time, they were sure the scheme was so draconian that it would force all sides to agree on a more reasonable budget bargain. They failed to factor in the compromise-shunning tea party Republicans for whom draconian cuts are a mere starting point in the radical downsizing of government. They were eager to leap off the fiscal cliff.

As long as the ideological deadlock remains, gimmicks may be the only option lawmakers have to lurch vaguely in the right direction, but it is a terrible way to govern the country that is supposed to be the world’s shining example of democracy. Conservatives may have to adjust their mantra that government is the problem. In fact, self-government seems to be our biggest headache.

www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-sequester-shenanigans-20130320,0,3649168.story

[garfield]

Spamming idiot.

[geopol]

Silly porky pig......

[Deleted]

Mar 22, 2013 17:23:10 GMT 10 geopol said:

Silly porky pig......

Don't insult porky pigs.

Even a common garden slug has more intelligence than Garfield.