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Friday, February 22, 2013

Arguments For Sequestration


We haven't made up our mind if sequestration is good or bad and we believe a majority of Americans have not decided either. So as a public service, we are including an article from Chip Wood. He is in favor of the slash and burn method verses doing nothing. 


Let us know what you think.

Conservative Tom


Let’s Call Obama’s Bluff

February 22, 2013 by  
Let’s Call Obama’s Bluff
PHOTOS.COM
The Chicken Littles in Washington are sure having conniptions over the thought of having to make some spending cuts, aren’t they?
“Sequestration” has become the new scare word, with the White House and its allies using language like “doomsday,” “deeply destructive,” “irresponsible” and “catastrophic.”
President Barack Obama sounded the alarm over sequestration in his State of the Unionspeech. “These sudden, harsh, arbitrary cuts,” he declared, “… would certainly slow our recovery, and cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs.”
Pardon me while I inject a little reality into this picture.
First of all, there is nothing “sudden” about this so-called crisis. It’s been staring us in the face for the past 18 months. And it was the White House, not Republicans in Congress, who first came up with the idea.
Back in the summer of 2011, Obama’s team made the proposal for mandatory spending cuts as part of the debt-ceiling negotiations. The Administration insisted that the cuts be divided between defense spending and domestic programs, no doubt assuming that the Republicans would never permit hundreds of billions of dollars to be removed from the Pentagon’s budget.
So far, Obama’s team has lost that bet. It seems that the Republicans who control the House of Representatives believe that sequestration is the only way to force some spending cuts on the Federal behemoth, so they are willing to let it happen.
I couldn’t agree with them more. During the last big tax-cut battle, doing nothing meant raising taxes for everyone. The Republicans got what they thought was the best possible compromise in the New Year’s Day fiscal cliff deal. The bargain retained the George W. Bush-era tax cuts for all but families earning $450,000 a year or more.
But today, doing nothing means that some spending cuts will be enacted. Since a majority of Congress seems to be incapable of agreeing on any plan to cut spending, how else is it going to happen?
After all, Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi all proclaim that we don’t have a spending problem in this country. What’s even more amazing is that they can say it with a straight face — and without their noses growing several inches longer.
That’s why I urge Republicans to call Obama’s bluff. Let sequestration begin on March 1. Ignore the dire threats and howls of outrage. Instead, let’s take the first small step toward living within our means.
That said, I have to agree with Charles Krauthammer, the popular FOX News commentator, who had this to say:
Of course, the sequester is terrible policy. The domestic cuts will be crude and the Pentagon cuts damaging. This is why the Republican House has twice passed bills offering more rationally allocated cuts. (They curb, for example, entitlement spending as well.)
Naturally, the Democratic Senate, which hasn’t passed a budget since before the iPad, has done nothing. Nor has the president — until his Tuesday plea.
Well, it wasn’t so much a plea as it was a threat. Of course, the powers that be will do everything they can to make the consequences of sequestration seem truly dreadful. We’ll hear horror story after horror story about vital services being slashed. Don’t believe a word of it, folks. That’s just how the game is played. Before you buy into all of the bullhockey about all of the horrors that will ensue, please consider a few facts.
We are talking about minuscule reductions in the Federal budget. The deal is supposed to reduce Federal spending by $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years. But thanks to the compromise Congress made last month to raise the debt ceiling, the actual cuts this year will be just $85 billion. And they may be even lower than that trivial amount. Given a Federal budget this year of $3.6 trillion, we’re talking about a measly 2.36 percent reduction.
Guess what? Even if every nickel of those cuts takes place, the Federal behemoth will still spend more money this year than it did last year. And please keep in mind that even with the $600 billion in tax increases Obama got last month, we will still need to borrow over $1 trillion this year so Uncle Sam can keep writing all of those checks.
While the nation’s growth rate has been stagnant, spending by governments at all levels has increased dramatically from $4.9 trillion in 2007 to $6.2 trillion in 2012, a jump of 26.5% which is driven entirely by the federal government as it has increased its spending by nearly 41% over this period. This has resulted in the total national debt rising from $9.2 trillion at the beginning of January 2008 to $16.45 trillion as of today. (a staggering 79% increase).
By the way, it isn’t just the “poor” who have reaped the benefits of all this increased spending, reports Gary D. Halbert. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, by 2011 (the last year for which numbers were available), the average total compensation for Federal government employees was $126,200. By comparison, the average total compensation for workers in the private sector was less than half that amount.
That’s right; while government employees on average were pulling in $126,200 a year, the average free-enterprise employee earned just $62,100.
And here’s another statistic I found even more shocking. From 2007 until 2011, the average net worth of all American households fell by nearly 40 percent. Look at that number again. It’s a four followed by a zero. There’s no decimal point in there.
Most of that horrendous decline was due to the devastating collapse in home prices. But the average household income is also down sharply, falling from $54,489 in 2007 to $50,054 in January 2012. We’re getting poorer fast, folks.
The bottom line is that the past four years of Obama’s Presidency have marked the worst period of economic growth for this country since the beginning of the Great Depression. Fewer of us are working (some 3 million fewer than when Obama took office). We’re earning less, saving less and worth less.
Faced with this record of economic disaster, the Democrats want to do more of what’s gotten us in this mess in the first place. They want to spend more, borrow more and tax more.
I’m in favor of doing anything that’s legal, moral and ethical to slow them down. As far as I can see, the sequestration, while far from ideal, qualifies on all three. So I say, bring it on.
Until next time, keep some powder dry.
–Chip Wood

10 comments:

  1. Well, good to see that you have progressed from "opposed" to "undecided" on the sequestration.

    Don't be surprised if they figure out some way to cancel the sequestration sometime in March or April. They are not serious about resolving the deficit problem or else we would see about $2 trillion in a combined package of cutting spending (especially military) and cutting tax expenditures.

    --David

    ReplyDelete
  2. This guy says, "The bottom line is that the past four years of Obama’s Presidency have marked the worst period of economic growth for this country since the beginning of the Great Depression."

    That is not the bottom line on economic growth since 2009. Wall Street and the rest of the U.S. corporate aristocracy is doing fabulously under the "socialist dictator" Obama. The DOW is back over 14,000 and corporate after-tax profits are the greatest percentage of GDP in history! The 1% are doing great while the rest suffer. That will be true whether Bush, Obama, or you-name-it is president of the U.S. Wall Street runs this country:

    "In the third quarter, corporate earnings were $1.75 trillion, up 18.6% from a year ago, according to last week's gross domestic product report. That took after-tax profits to their greatest percentage of GDP in history."

    http://money.cnn.com/2012/12/03/news/economy/record-corporate-profits/index.html

    Also, this guy needs to separate unemployment into its two categories since 2009. Private sector employment has been steadily growing, but public sector employment has declined by 3 million more than private sector has grown. This is the first recession where government employment was not INCREASING as the country came out of the recession (compare to recessions under Clinton and Bush).

    --David (OWS)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Believe you have the employment numbers backwards. Private employment is NOT growing while government grows like topsy.

      Delete
  3. Your cheering for military cuts will end up with us in a big war instead of the small ones. We cut back after WWI and got WWII. You need to learn the lessons of history.

    ReplyDelete
  4. You wrote, "Believe you have the employment numbers backwards. Private employment is NOT growing while government grows like topsy."

    Sorry, my numbers are correct. Here it is a nice little graph for you (red line=public sector employment and blue line=private sector employment)…

    http://www.businessinsider.com/the-chart-public-sector-vs-private-sector-employment-2012-6

    The spike you see around 2010 in public sector was just because they hired temporary workers to do the 2010 census. Otherwise, public sector employment has gone straight down since 2010, and private sector employment has gone straight up. If the guy were being honest, this is what he should have said.

    We can cut the military budget by the amount in the BCA and still have by far the strongest military on the planet. Look at these numbers, especially #4 which shows that the United States spends more on military than the next 13 countries COMBINED!

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/07/everything-chuck-hagel-needs-to-know-about-the-defense-budget-in-charts/

    We can't afford to keep wasting absurd amounts of money on military. The best part of the sequester is the cutback on military. Obama already has more than enough military power to blast Iran into oblivion, if that is what he wants to do.

    --David

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I know this won't make any sense to you but we will have the smallest army and marine contingent since WWI if sequester goes through. My source:http://news.yahoo.com/size-u-military-since-wwi-185632617.html

      It is not wise to be the only leader of the world with less troops than we have had in a century. If your argument is that we should not patrol the world, I ask you who should? The UN? Iran? Venezuela?

      Delete
  5. What's the relevance? Without going back to the draft, how are you going to get 3.5 million people into the military? What would THAT cost?! And what the hell would you DO with them?

    My point, which you have not yet acknowledged, is that even with the BCA cuts to the military, Obama will have more than enough military power to blow away Iran (or any other country), if that's his objective.

    As you know by now, I am a Libertarian who opposes the U.S. interventionist foreign policy. Speaking of which, did you notice that Obama just sent military troops into Africa to expand his illegal and unconstitutional worldwide drone warfare campaign?

    Europe, Japan, Taiwan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc., etc., etc. have enough money to finance their own damn national defense. If one of their neighbors crosses the border and invades their country, then the U.S. can join the alliance to crush them just as we did when Saddam invaded Kuwait. Thus, I an NOT a "pacifist" or "isolationist". I am a "non-interventionist" into the affairs of other sovereign countries. Ron Paul has explained the difference between these concepts many times in speeches and papers.

    --David

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A--we are not going to re-institute the draft, that would be totally unpopular.

      B-We do not have the military power to offset a China-Russia movement for a couple reasons. First we have troops in 80 plus countries. Secondly, we do not blow anyone away anymore, that is too politically incorrect. Lastly, we are spread too thin to take any reasonable actions against any enemy.

      I heard about Mali--it was YOUR president that sent those troops. I want the son of a gun impeached, which will never happen as long as Dems control the Senate.

      I don't disagree with Europe, Japan, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia having enough money to finance their own armies. I would disagree with Israel. As our ONLY ally in the region and one that faces unbelievably determined enemies, they need our support but sending planes and tanks to Egypt is not helpful. That also was done by YOUR president.

      The overall issue that we need to come to grips with on the sequester is how it will be instituted. All departments of government can take cuts, however, the defense has had larger cuts than any other department.

      Delete
  6. China and Russia are not going to have a war with the U.S., but if either of them did, the U.S. would prevail. China owns a trillion in our debt and we are their largest export customer for all the crap we import. They economically depend on us as much as we on them. It would be stupid and suicidal for them to start a war.

    Israel already has all the military arms needed to defeat Iran (thanks in no small part to Obama BTW), and the U.S. would back them if Iran were crazy enough to start a war with them. You don't believe that, but I can't help you on that one. The U.S. is the "gun runners" to the world. We sell to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc. but always more to Israel than anybody else so that they will always enjoy the balance of power in the Middle East. This didn't start with Obama, and will not end with Obama. Selling military hardware has been a major export of this country for decades.

    Obama is as much YOUR president as mine, assuming you are a U.S. citizen! Neither of us voted for him.

    The military needs to be cut even more, but at least BCA is a good start.

    --David

    If you think it is politically incorrect to blow anybody away, there wasn't much left standing in Iraq by 2004. The whole country was in shambles, partly from the Sunni insurgents, but moreso from relentless bombings by the U.S. If Obama is going to take out all of Iran's nuclear facilities (many of which are buried in urban areas), he will have to do horrendous damage to the country's infrastructure and civilian population. If you really want to do this, then let's not kid ourselves about what it would require or pretend as if we don't already have more than enough military power to do it.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Tom, if you think the U.S. would not wipe the floor with Russia if they were ever crazy enough to start a conventional war with us, go here and compare their military power to ours…

    http://www.globalfirepower.com/country-military-strength-detail.asp?country_id=United-States-of-America

    You can see that we have them beaten by a wide margin in land, air, and sea power. Russia starting a war with us has he same probability as Obama confiscating guns -- namely, ZERO! And China is even weaker than Russia. All the paranoia about Russia/China is just an excuse to keep pouring money into weapons systems that even the Pentagon says we don't need. The BCA is a first step toward stopping the insanity.

    --David

    ReplyDelete

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