http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/08/news/economy/white-house-budget-cuts/index.html?hpt=po_c2

Obama apparently trying to sway public opinion against the sequester now via scare tactics. The democratic solution of even more tax hikes and fewer cuts is just not palpable and is a non-starter IMO. We just had a significant tax hike with no spending cuts. No way the republicans do, or should, accept a plan that includes more tax increases.

The only offer that is going to make it through the house would be a plan with more spending cuts, focused on entitlements. That of course probably won't make it through the senate, which begs the question, is the sequester inevitable?

2/8/2013 3:39:54 PM

The cynic in me sees the GOPs best strategy is to push hard to stop the defense cuts separately, and then deal with the sequester as a separate issue, thus eliminating the Dems leverages.

And the Dems best strategy is to let the GOP be the first to propose specific cuts, not just cuts, but very detailed specific cuts to social safety net programs if they really want them to be cut, so they can bash the GOP with it in the next elections, and any cuts they agree to are less than what the GOP originally asked for.

Which is of course why the GOP will have to whine that they want Obama to go first and propose cuts on behalf of the GOP, which he would seemingly have no incentive to go first since he doesn't want the cuts.

I think it's all just showmanship and theater at this point by both parties. I don't think the sequester will happen in full on March 1.

[Edited on February 8, 2013 at 3:52 PM. Reason : .]

2/8/2013 3:51:05 PM

Lets follow Europe and see how many dips we can add to our recession!


We are not ready yet for austerity

(and the GOP plan of removing defense cuts and replacing them with entitlement cuts is the exact opposite of a sensible plan)

2/8/2013 4:13:47 PM

How about the GOP stop creating the problems that lead to stupid measures like sequestration to begin with?

2/8/2013 4:39:17 PM

If our elected officials could act like professional adults, there'd be a nice even split in cuts that span both entitlements and defense.


that's about as likely as

2/8/2013 4:42:30 PM

^ /The Soap Box

[Edited on February 8, 2013 at 4:50 PM. Reason : ]

2/8/2013 4:50:03 PM

Quote :

"We are not ready yet for austerity"

There is never going to be a time when we're "ready for austerity". We're not going to achieve recovery and then say "alright, now bring on the cuts and higher taxes". Austerity is a consequence; it's economic "rehab". You don't look forward to it, it isn't fun, it isn't desirable, and it could be avoided, but once you've done the damage, austerity is coming, and the longer you put it off, the worse it's going to be.

2/8/2013 5:09:21 PM

I fixed some posts:
If our elected officials could act like professional adults, there'd be a nice even split in cuts that span both entitlements and defense.larger cuts to defense than entitlements

austerity is coming, and the longer you put it off, the worse it's going to be if you rush into it while we are barely recovering from a major recession, you will dip back into that recession like europe is



[Edited on February 8, 2013 at 5:12 PM. Reason : fixed them for you]

2/8/2013 5:10:33 PM

^^ that's idiotic.

There's no inherent benefit to "rehab" for a country's economy. The country isn't a self-healing system like the human body. If you choke and strange the country, it chokes and strangles the country. Things get worse, and can very likely stay worse. The US is a young country, we haven't even eclipsed some of the past great empires, and you're supporting efforts to hasten our collapse.

What IS sensible is a slow draw-down in deficit spending, at points in time when we can tolerate it, without gutting safety nets, and technological and societal advancement.

2/8/2013 6:39:16 PM

The US just needs those shoe pads that remove toxins through its feet!

2/8/2013 6:42:51 PM

Quote :

"if you rush into it while we are barely recovering from a major recession, you will dip back into that recession like europe is"

Oh, "austerity" would definitely look like a recession. No doubt about that. I'm absolutely not making the argument that cutting spending and raising taxes would improve the economy in the short-term.

The argument you're making is the same argument that almost all politicians are making. The economy is "too fragile" right now, so let's wait until the economy is on solid ground before taking action. Of course, that solid ground won't come as long as debt is flooding the system and inflating bubbles all over the place. The very fucking foundation of the economy is unsound. Kick the can, move the goal posts, whatever you want to call it. Let's do anything but address the fundamental economic problems we have today, because we're not ready for the gravy train to derail quite yet.

Quote :

"There's no inherent benefit to "rehab" for a country's economy. The country isn't a self-healing system like the human body. If you choke and strange the country, it chokes and strangles the country. Things get worse, and can very likely stay worse. The US is a young country, we haven't even eclipsed some of the past great empires, and you're supporting efforts to hasten our collapse."

You missed the metaphor, I think. If you're addicted to heroin, the highs are fantastic. The withdrawal is ghastly and sobering up is hell. Debt spending is our heroin, austerity is our rehab. Excess debt results in severe market distortions that have rippling, generational effects, but while the borrowed money is being spent, everything seems great. It's only when the interest has to be paid back that it starts to seem like a poor decision.

Even when you go through rehab, you really never get back to where you were; some scarring stays with you. You can stop doing additional damage, though, which is a very good thing for the generations ahead.

None of this matters if you still are in a state of pure delusion where government budgets funded by debt are a positive thing. That's not a belief based on reason, so I can't "reason" you out of it. If I were suffering withdrawal symptoms, you'd be the one saying, "so buy some more heroin idiot!"

2/8/2013 7:24:21 PM

Quote :

"If our elected officials could act like professional adults, there'd be a nice even split in cuts that span both entitlements and defense.larger cuts to defense than entitlements"

while I would personally support that, given the needs of the country right now, I'm also a realist, and compromise is going to be required from both parties.
For dems, that will mean some cuts to entitlements. It's a matter of dems performing the due diligence to determine what entitlement cuts will result in the biggest financial difference while causing the least harm... the converse is true for the republicans.

The problem is that (ok, i'll put on the tinfoil hat of conspiracy nut for a second), these decisions are not made by the aforementioned due diligence but by the dollars of various lobbying groups.

2/10/2013 4:44:44 PM

I think, like with everything else Congress does, they will wait to the last minute and use a half measure to deal with it, but that we wont have to deal with a full blown sequester. Congress just needs to squeeze some more theater and fundraising out of it first.

2/10/2013 5:09:21 PM

Why can't we cut defense AND entitlements? Cut some from both while refining the tax code, getting rid of retarded tax breaks.

2/10/2013 9:00:54 PM

While I'm all for some larger cuts to defense (there's plenty of bloat to target), there is simply not enough defense expenditures to cut that are going to fundamentally fix the growing deficits.

The simple fact is this: mandatory spending is the millstone that's sinking Federal spending in the long run. Certainly spikes in discretionary spending haven't helped (like Iraq and Afghanistan), but while those numbers are coming down, the mandatory piece continues to become not just a bigger percentage of the pie but rapidly growing in real dollars as well.

I by no means endorse Heritage, but it's the best graph I could find that shows this:
http://www.heritage.org/federalbudget/mandatory-discretionary-spending

We can make small changes to help offset these costs like raising the retirement age, but no one has the will.

Defense too, it's tricky because people assume that it's the cost of brand new boondoggle weapon systems. While those are a significant portion (I think somewhere 15% ish), 2/3 of the spending is still driven by personnel and O&M spending. You have to fundamentally shrink the military size which means closing bases, which Congress fights tooth and nail (even more so than weapons) and reduced capabilities (which the White House continues to refuse to acknowledge). I agree that it needs to shrink, but until politicians are ready to sacrifice jobs in their districts or mothball carrier battle groups, it's not going to happen.

2/11/2013 1:46:01 PM

I don't support insane defense spending, but of all the branches, it feels like cuts to defense have the most impact on people employed by the government.

2/11/2013 10:02:09 PM

Anyone else think this may trigger a credit downgrade by another agency?

2/19/2013 11:29:47 AM

Yes

2/19/2013 11:42:40 AM

we can only hope. i hope they fuck our shit up. The beatings should continue until morale improves. It has become necessary to destroy it in order to save it.

2/19/2013 12:12:15 PM

Only if Moody's feels like getting sued too.

I'm really interested to see how the S&P lawsuit shakes out.

2/19/2013 12:14:34 PM

Help me out here,

Are you expecting a downgrade due to some bills going unpaid (is that technically what happens during the sequester?) or do you expect it because of the ensuing drop in economic growth?

2/19/2013 12:17:37 PM

the congressional bitching and stalling till the last second is all that we need for another agency to downgrade it

[Edited on February 19, 2013 at 12:20 PM. Reason : .]

2/19/2013 12:20:19 PM

^ exactly, no bills need be left unpaid for it to happen. a continued loss in confidence is sufficient.

2/19/2013 12:40:31 PM

Quote :

"the congressional bitching and stalling till the last second"

...is now the norm for Congress. They passed the sequester last second, if they'll address it, then that will only be last second too. I wonder if credit agencies will adjust to that being the normal or not.

2/19/2013 12:54:20 PM

Meh, Obama and congressional democrats are just getting what they asked for when they allowed this to be an option. The fact that republicans are willing to let this happen just shows how awful the other option is and how little trust there is between the two parties.

The republicans are fucking awful, but they have a point when they say that every time they've gone along with tax increases in return for promised spending cuts in the future the spending cuts never materialize.

2/19/2013 1:35:33 PM

You know it's funny... up until recently, people seemed almost happy about sequestration because they only saw the 10% cut to the DoD budget, not fully understanding that a 10% cut to the rest of the civil service was going to have a much greater and more devastating impact to the economy as a whole. Like air travel.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/02/21/172524523/one-place-you-may-notice-the-sequester-at-the-airport

2/21/2013 9:53:20 AM

Just eliminate TSA. Problem solved. They don't actually provide a service or security.

2/21/2013 10:07:42 AM

the only people who were happy about sequestration were sad about cuts to DoD, all the war-hawk tea party nuts

2/21/2013 10:09:28 AM

huh?

2/21/2013 1:06:32 PM

Only tea party people were hoping for it, the people who were excited about it were so because of entitlement cuts. Not because of DoD cuts.

2/21/2013 1:47:43 PM

There are plenty of people, myself included, that think entitlements and defense spending should be cut. I hope I'm not blowing your mind here.

2/21/2013 1:56:11 PM

I think defense should be cut at a 2 to 1 ratio. What are we truly defending?

2/21/2013 2:04:12 PM

Quote :

"There is never going to be a time when we're "ready for austerity". We're not going to achieve recovery and then say "alright, now bring on the cuts and higher taxes". Austerity is a consequence; it's economic "rehab". You don't look forward to it, it isn't fun, it isn't desirable, and it could be avoided, but once you've done the damage, austerity is coming, and the longer you put it off, the worse it's going to be."

Well, my foot hurts, better go ahead and chop it off, waiting for it to heal or seeing a doctor is just going to make it hurt worse later.

2/21/2013 2:53:41 PM

And even with the massive economic turmoil, layoffs, furloughs, etc... stemming from this manufactured problem, all of the cuts do very little to actually address the debt. By some projections, we will only offset the debt by about 2 years.

2/21/2013 3:02:31 PM

I can hear Greg Fishel now. "At the airport, the temperature is....well...we just don't know because the weather observers have been furloughed..."

I'm not getting too worried just yet, but I know that my job is one of the ones that could be furloughed or simply done away with (much to the chagrin of air traffic controllers and airport administrators). I'll just wait and see how things shake out. Just know that these cuts will have a real impact on real people. A substantially more prudent approach is to simply cut back on how much bureaucracy and meaningless training they make us do each year instead of just cutting the program all together.

2/21/2013 3:34:29 PM

^, ^^

Those are just "growing pains" necessary to return to sanity, if you listen to the libertarian-types.

2/21/2013 3:40:23 PM

Quote :

"Well, my foot hurts, better go ahead and chop it off, waiting for it to heal or seeing a doctor is just going to make it hurt worse later."

It's more like your foot is infected and I'm suggesting that we treat your infection, but you're saying to just wait it out and hope that the infection heals on its own.

But, yes, these metaphors are a great demonstration of our differences. You want to treat the symptoms, I want to address the root cause.

[Edited on February 21, 2013 at 4:32 PM. Reason : ]

2/21/2013 4:26:23 PM

Quote :

"There are plenty of people, myself included, that think entitlements and defense spending should be cut. I hope I'm not blowing your mind here."

you are misunderstanding me

someone said it was funny that liberals who were praising this are finally realizing this includes entitlement cuts and not just DoD cuts. I was saying that the only people I've seen happy about sequestration are happy exactly because of entitlement cuts, not the other way around.

^you're saying to cut off the foot even though it will only stop the infection for a little while and since we are recovering from the flu will end up making us a lot worse.

[Edited on February 21, 2013 at 5:32 PM. Reason : analogies are dumb]

2/21/2013 5:30:19 PM

I don't view cutting government services and adventurism as "cutting off the foot". Feet are useful and worth saving if at all possible. We've got plenty of bombs and guns, more than we'll ever need, so producing less of those isn't a problem from my perspective. Cutting entitlements would be tough, but those programs are financially unsustainable anyway. Retired people aren't entitled to a portion of the wages of the working generation. Sorry, I don't care what the law says, you shouldn't be able to promise yourself money from future generations.

When you think that government and society are the same thing, sure, cutting government must mean that you're harming society. This is all rooted in abuse of language, though. Society is not the government; government is a parasite and people have been conditioned to believe that current functions of government could not exist without government. Old people didn't just die on the street before entitlements.

[Edited on February 21, 2013 at 5:55 PM. Reason : ]

2/21/2013 5:54:58 PM

Quote :

"We've got plenty of bombs and guns, more than we'll ever need, so producing less of those isn't a problem from my perspective."

This is way too simplistic of a view regarding what the DoD does, the services it provides, and who is funded with its dollars that are being cut. Perhaps that was intentional though?
Meanwhile, China has been exploiting U.S. intelligence, think tank, private, and public networks for years now due to lax and underdeveloped cyber security.

And speaking of entitlements, the sequester barley touches the main drivers (meaning social security and Medicare). Instead, it cuts indiscriminately from other programs/agencies on the non defense side, like the DOT, Parks service, education, or the FDA.


Don't get me wrong.... There are savings to be made from cuts to defense and non defense budgets. But I think we would all benefit (at least in this discussion) from an understanding/remembering this sequester isn't a good cost saving measure....it was never meant to be. It's a ridiculous tool used to force congress to come to agreement, which they can't. It's just a shame that citizens are the ones being hurt by this tool, instead of congress. But then again, how often does congress make laws that they don't really have to live with or suffer through?



[Edited on February 21, 2013 at 6:30 PM. Reason : Kkthx]

2/21/2013 6:20:11 PM

Sequester only cuts DISCRETIONARY spending. It will never reach the entitlements. They are sacred cows.

Neither party wants sequester, and because of that, it was written the way it was written. The dialogue behind it is the same as the dialogue that surrounded the debt ceiling debate. Government could delay default strictly using accounting methods for an extended period of time, but rather, they threaten shutdown of government services. Why? To get constituents pissed off.

To avoid sequester, we absolutely need to cut some defense spending and some entitlement spending. No politician will stand for it though.

[Edited on February 21, 2013 at 6:32 PM. Reason : .]

2/21/2013 6:30:22 PM

I would like to see a good breakdown of how much of the defense budget actually washes down to research programs at universities or with the private sector.

2/21/2013 7:44:06 PM

^
Quite a lot through grants by Office of Naval Research and others but I'd like to see the numbers too. Universities are also whacked by reductions in the discretionary science budgets, will see a ~9% loss of overhead from grants, etc

From the original OMD report, think it will be smaller since the sequester was delayed two months.
NSF – $463 million (p 188)
NSF MRFC – $14 million (p 189)
NASA Science – $417 million (p 185)
NIH – $2,518 million (p 82)
DoE Science – $400 million (p 67)
NIST – $65 million cut, $47M from science (p 37)
NOAA – $257 million from discretionary spending (p 36)
CDC – $464 million (p 74)
USGS – $88 million (p 109)

2/23/2013 3:39:14 PM

http://wonkwire.com/2013/02/27/chart-of-the-day-196/

2/27/2013 4:36:14 PM

Republican governors are publicly calling out Republican congressmen. Ouch.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/02/why-republican-governors-hate-the-republican-congress/273493/

2/27/2013 4:43:00 PM

academics are getting slaughtered by sequester. the country is officialy run by lobyists.

2/28/2013 10:56:42 PM

Sure, slaughtered in the sense that even with sequester our federal spending in 2013 will still be more than in 2012. In the last decade annual federal spending has doubled. You could almost explain that with the wars and such, but those are ending and we've pretty well left Iraq so how the fuck can you justify continued increases in spending, especially defense spending.

All this sequester fear-mongering is absolutely disgusting.

2/28/2013 11:00:34 PM

You might have a point if the cuts were structured differently.

Unfortunately, they're not and you don't.

2/28/2013 11:20:37 PM

Please, explain what you mean.

3/1/2013 12:03:57 AM

Describe how you'd cut your household budget by 10%.

3/1/2013 12:05:13 AM