The Sequester Follies
February 28, 2013 by Ben Crystal
UPI
President Barack Obama backpedaled on the sequester in a speech Tuesday.
I knew the so-called “sequester” house of cards would ultimately collapse. As Wayne Allyn Root pointed out in Sequestration Ponzi Scheme and as and Bob Livingston pointed out in When Cuts Aren’t Really Cuts, the sequester was never more than a pittance, an empty symbolic gesture by the Washington political elite made solely for the purpose of calming the low-information masses who quiver with fear until their masters pat their heads. President Barack Obama and his accomplices thought it up, only to deny their own folly and instead use their corporate media flacks to cast Obama as an innocent bystander to the Machiavellian machinations of the GOP. Fortunately for Obama, the GOP leadership has grown so jelly-spined that playing them for suckers is easier than convincing the Democrat masses that Obama’s latest course-reversal is just the President’s “evolving.”
But Obama and his cronies overplayed their hand this time around. Even casual observers recognized Obama’s poorly disguised duplicity, and the average citizens upon whom Obama’s economic cannonballs always land were too focused on basic survival amid the wreckage of Obama’s failed policies to care much about another liberal scam. And that may well be why Obama himself knocked over the shaky sequester construct.
During a speech at the Newport News, Va., naval shipyard (where they build what Obama equated with “horses and bayonets” during his final Presidential debate with Mitt Romney), Obama whined: “These cuts are wrong. They’re not smart. They’re not fair. They’re a self-inflicted wound that doesn’t have to happen.”
Just to ensure we’re all on the same page: The President of the United States, in an effort to further demonize his perceived enemies, attacked them for compromising on an idea he formulated but in which he evidently never believed, all while standing in an industrial center dedicated to building things he considers antiquated and unnecessary.
Presented with a similar knot of logical self-entanglements, I do believe the kids these days would respond simply: “Facepalm.” Nuff said.
Remember that the original purpose of the Sequester was to force parties in CONGRESS to come up with a compromise plan. They CHOSE not to compromise and therefore chose the Sequester. It is Congress that has the responsibility for causing it and it is the Congress that has the responsibility for fixing it. Directing blame on the President is a means of deflecting their responsibility. Obama is far from perfect and share's some responsibility for our deficit; however, blaming him as the sole evil is childish. Everyone should start acting like adults and own up to their part in getting us to where we are.
ReplyDeleteYes both are responsible, however, Obams keep saying that it was NOT his idea and clearly it was. It is just another deceiving device to continue the "campaign."
DeleteHe NEVER takes responsibility for ANYTHING. It always is someone else's fault. Please let me know one thing that he has said "that was my fault and for it I take full responsibility." Nutin!
He is like the little kid that has his hand caught in the cookie jar and blames it on the dog. I am sick and tired of him and we still have nearly four more years of this constant blame fest.
Fact-checking…
ReplyDeleteNow that everyone in D.C. is pointing the fickle finger of blame for the sequester, let's see how the voting went…
House:
Democrats = 95 yes, 95 no.
Republicans = 174 yes (including Paul Ryan), 66 no.
Senate:
Democrats = 45 yes, 6 no.
Republicans = 28 yes, 19 no.
Conclusion: Obama's sequester proposal would not have passed in either the House or the Senate without Republican support. In fact, more Republicans than Democrats voted for it (202 to 140).
The only "innocent bystanders" are those who voted against it, the citizens who will pay for it with the jobs, and the kids who will be affected by the cuts.
--David
Yes, there were votes for the sequester and we are not letting them off the hook. They set up the mess , however it was thought at that time that cooler heads would come to a palatable compromise. However, your President has no intentions of compromising. He dismisses any compromise if spending is not increased. How can someone bargain in good faith with someone who has none.
ReplyDeleteHowever, all the blathering about the devastation, will soon pass when nothing much occurs.
By the way, what kids are going to be hurt. Ernie Duncan today admitted that it is Headstart funds but they will not lose money until the fall.
The gridlock is not on the spending side of the equation. It is on the revenue side. There is already $1.2 trillion in spending cuts in the BCA. Obama won't accept any deal without some revenue included, and the Republicans will not give one dime in additional revenue. Gridlock will continue until/unless one side or the other "blinks" on revenue.
ReplyDeleteKids lose if Congress does not back out of the sequester.
The military cuts are real and deep, assuming that they last for the full 10 years. It would take military spending back to the pre-war level and hold it there. That is the only good thing coming out of the sequester, and it's worth the dumb cross-the-board cuts on other agencies.
--David
The gridlock is on the SPENDING side. The Republicans gave in on the "cliff" to avoid the problem with the understanding that they would get spending cuts to settle the sequester. Obama will not even consider changing the spending side, therefore, he is the problem.
ReplyDeleteHow do kids lose? It only effects programs in the fall.
The cuts are only in certain programs and not across the board.
The gridlock is not on the spending side. Heck, the BCA (which Obama proposed and signed) is already today $1.2 TRILLION in spending cuts with NO revenue component at all. That's double the revenue from the "cliff" deal.
ReplyDeleteYou are quoting the current Republican spin. Obama has said forever than any deficit reduction plan must be balanced -- meaning containing both revenue and spending cuts. The "cliff" deal was an exchange to keep the federal government funded through the 2012 election. The result was an extension of ALL the Bush tax cuts for income up to $400,000, which means no revenue from 99+% of tax-payers. The idea that part of this deal was that Obama would agree to never expect another dime in revenue henceforth is a fiction invented by Mitch McConnell (and others). Obama has already offered, among other things, "chained CPI" to cut benefits to seniors (which ticks off many seniors) but insists that it must be coupled with more revenue by closing loopholes for the billionaire 1%. The gridlock is on the revenue side. Obama won't accept any package without revenue, and Republicans won't accept any package with a dime of revenue -- that is, until one side or the other "blinks."
Kids will lose unless the sequester is killed or replaced.
Yes, certain programs are exempt under BCA, but that that are covered get across the board percentage cuts.
--David
David, what have you been listening to? EVERY worker in this country got a 2% increase in their taxes. It had nothing to do with the sequester.
ReplyDeleteObama already got the increase in revenue with the cliff negotitations and repubs made it clear that the sequester had to focus on the spending side.
Where do you get the idea that kids will lose--Arnie Duncan, Secretary of Education, says that it will only effect a small portion of head start programs and then only in the fall!
There are NO across the board cuts in the two biggest drivers of the deficit, that being Medicare and Medicaid. We need to focus there.
The payroll tax cut was understood and designed to be a temporary measure to help pull us out of the deep recession. It simply expired on schedule, as planned by Congress. It is not as if Republicans agreed to pass any new tax legislation to increase payroll taxes.
ReplyDeleteThe cliff deal and the sequester are both done. The Republicans came out of it with a net $2 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue, mainly because Obama caved in and agreed to raise the top marginal rate from $250K to $400K, after campaigning on $250K in the election. The fiction from McConnell, et. al. is that Obama agreed that any further deficit reduction must be all on the spending side without a dime of new revenue for closing the tax loopholes for billionaires. On the contrary, he has consistently insisted that the deficit reduction package must have at least some revenue as well as further spending cuts. This is the crux of the gridlock.
The solution to Medicare/Medicaid, as I have told you many times, is to get our healthcare system reformed along the lines of every other OECD country that achieves better population health statistics than the U.S. at half the per capita costs. Obamacare is a good step in that direction, but we still have a long way to go.
Duncan notwithstanding, here is a summary of all the ways the sequester hits kids on education, healthcare, nutrition, etc....
http://www.alternet.org/speakeasy/alyssa-figueroa/how-sequester-will-hurt-women-and-children
--David
The author starts the article with the words "Huge Budget Cuts" which is so false, it negates the rest of the article. Only one half of the 85 billion is coming out of the budget, the other half is military spending. So we are talking just short of $40 billion in a 1.2 trillion budget, a vertiual drop in the bucket. That is a 3% cut.
ReplyDeleteThe author then goes onto to say that the cuts would basically only effect women, what blather.
What are you talking about? Military spending is as much part of the budget as is nonmilitary discretionary spending. Together, they add up to$85 billion spending cuts this year. Is $1.2 trillion in cuts over 10 years "huge"? I don't know, but I will take it, especially since half of it is on the military side.
ReplyDelete> "The author then goes onto to say that the cuts would basically only effect women, what blather."
Again, what the heck are you talking about? Much of the article is about the impact of the cuts on kids, not just women. Indeed, I gave you this link in response to your question about how BCA would affect kids.
--David
Here is an excellent little analysis of the sequester in relation to GDP. The pundits like to whine that the sequester will reduce GDP this year by 1/2 point. The question should be "Why should we care?" Not all GDP growth is the same. We need to separate GDP growth caused by (stupid) government spending (such as military) from GDP growth caused by real economic expansion in the private sector. His comparison of 1983 to 1997 is illustrative. GDP grew 4.5% in each of those years, but more of it came from government and less from private sector in 1983 than in 1997. Does this help you feel any better about the sequester?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/02/us-needs-private-sector-growth-not-gdp-accounting-tricks/
David