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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Soul Crusher on February 28, 2013, 11:31:01 AM
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House is threatening a presidential veto of a Senate Republican measure that would give President Barack Obama more authority and flexibility to find $85 billion in spending cuts this year. The measure is intended to replace the automatic across-the-board cuts scheduled to kick in Friday.
The White House says it instead backs a Democratic measure to replace the cuts with tax hikes on millionaires and spending reductions over 10 years.
Neither bill is likely to survive Senate procedural obstacles Thursday.
The White House says there is no way to cut $85 billion over the remaining seven months of the fiscal year without "drastically affecting national security and economic policies." A statement by the White House budget office says Obama's advisers would strongly recommend he veto the Republican proposal.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_BUDGET_BATTLE_OBAMA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-02-28-13-04-31
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"Spending restrictions over 10 years."
Wow. What a farce.
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LOL hey necrosis is this the GOP's fault too?
::) its plainly obvious that obama and the dems dont want to cut spending at all.
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What we see here, is the biggest game of chicken being played out in front of America and the world.
If Obama vetoes, the republicans get to accuse him of not wanting to tackle gov spending.
If the sequester goes through, everything tanks and the Dems get to blame the Republicans for the damage.
Neither side can really afford for it to go through, ...both don't want to chicken out at the last moment.
Reminds me of that scene from "Footloose"
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If Obama were serious about going line by line through the budget and ending wasteful programs like he promised we would not be here.
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If Obama were serious about going line by line through the budget and ending wasteful programs like he promised we would not be here.
If all the players in Washington weren't owned by lobby groups, and were really interested in solving problems rather than playing partisan politics, this disastrous situation wouldn't have begun in the first place.
It's not a LEFT / RIGHT thing, it's a TOP / BOTTOM thing.
The politicians are competing with the people for preferential placement within the pyramid.
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If all the players in Washington weren't owned by lobby groups, and were really interested in solving problems rather than playing partisan politics, this disastrous situation wouldn't have begun in the first place.
It's not a LEFT / RIGHT thing, it's a TOP / BOTTOM thing.
The politicians are competing with the people for preferential placement within the pyramid.
Nonsense - most of the people on the left want endless govt, endless taxes, endless regulation, etc.
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Nonsense - most of the people on the left want endless govt, endless taxes, endless regulation, etc.
The right wants endless government as well. It guarantees their own job security too.
The government grew leaps & bounds under bush. There is no difference between either side.
The sooner you realize that, the sooner you'll stop being led around like a bull with a ring through it's nose.
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CBO: Dem Sequester Bill Adds Billions to Deficit
By Andrew Stiles
February 28, 2013 2:59 P.M.
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The sequester replacement bill proposed by Senate Democrats, and endorsed by the White House, would add $7.2 billion to the federal deficit over ten years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
“CBO estimates that S. 388 would increase direct spending by $62.4 billion and revenues by $55.1 billion over the 2013–2023 period. Thus, the cumulative deficit would increase by $7.2 billion from those changes,” CBO wrote in a report.
The Democratic bill would replace the $85 billion in automatic cuts scheduled to take effect on Friday with a mixture of tax increases and spending cuts to defense programs and farm subsidies. However, those spending cuts would be phased in over a ten-year period, whereas the sequestration cuts would occur this year.
The Senate will vote Thursday on the Democratic plan, as well as a Republican bill that would essentially keep the sequester in place, but give the Obama administration greater flexibility to administer the cuts. Both are expected to fail. Congressional leaders will then meet at the White House on Friday (hours before sequestration officially takes effect) to discuss how to proceed.
President Obama and his Democratic allies have repeatedly pressured Republicans to agree to raise taxes as part of a “balanced” agreement to reduce the deficit. “Republicans in Congress need to do what the American public overwhelmingly wants them to do, which is agree to a balanced approach to further reducing the deficit,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said earlier this week.
Democrats have mastered the “balanced approach” portion of this equation; actually reducing the deficit is something they haven’t quite gotten the hang of. In any event, this should be a fun vote for the half-dozen or so red-state Democrats facing reelection in 2014.
UPDATE: As expected, both bills fell short of the 60 votes required for passage, and the aforementioned red-state Democrats cast some interesting votes.
The GOP plan was defeated 38 to 62, with nine Republicans — Senators Ayotte (N.H.), Collins (Maine), Cruz (Texas), Graham (S.C.), Lee (Utah), McCain (Ariz.), Paul (Ky.), Rubio (Fla.), and Heller (Nev.) — voting no. Democrats Max Baucus (Mont.) and Mark Warner (Va.) voted yes. Both are up for reelection in 2014.
The Democratic bill fell 51 to 49. Three Democrats — Senators Hagan (N.C.), Landrieu (La.), and Pryor (Ark.) — voted against their own party’s plan. They are also facing reelection in 2014. Senate Majority Leader Reid (D., Nev.) voted against the plan as well, but only as procedural tactic that allows him to call another vote on the bill at a later date.
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Embarrassing: Senate Democrats Fail to Pass a Single Sequester Replacement Bill in 15 Months
speaker.gov ^
Posted on Thursday, February 28, 2013 4:25:27 PM by Sub-Driver
Embarrassing: Senate Democrats Fail to Pass a Single Sequester Replacement Bill in 15 Months
Posted by Speaker Boehner Press Office February 28, 2013 Press Release
WASHINGTON, DC – House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) released the following statement after the Democratic-controlled Senate failed to pass legislation replacing President Obama’s sequester:
“It’s embarrassing that after 15 months Senate Democrats still haven’t passed a single sequester replacement bill. The American people deserve better. Republicans in the House passed legislation almost a year ago in May, and again in December, to avert the president’s sequester and help put us on a path to a balanced budget. Now that today’s political stunt to raise taxes has failed, it’s time for the president and Senate Democrats to do the hard work that is necessary to pass a bill in the Senate so we can begin to resolve this issue.”
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What we see here, is the biggest game of chicken being played out in front of America and the world.
If Obama vetoes, the republicans get to accuse him of not wanting to tackle gov spending.
If the sequester goes through, everything tanks and the Dems get to blame the Republicans for the damage.
Neither side can really afford for it to go through, ...both don't want to chicken out at the last moment.
Reminds me of that scene from "Footloose"
How do the dems get to blame the reps if the sequester happens?
They originally wanted 2.5 trillion in cuts and compromised with 85 billion.
The sequester was obamas idea as well...
And that's if the cuts have the effect political pundits are yelling about
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If all the players in Washington weren't owned by lobby groups, and were really interested in solving problems rather than playing partisan politics, this disastrous situation wouldn't have begun in the first place.
It's not a LEFT / RIGHT thing, it's a TOP / BOTTOM thing.
The politicians are competing with the people for preferential placement within the pyramid.
If that's what you believe then you have to root for the lesser of two evils.
The reps at least act like they want to slow govt spending. The dems may say they do but what they really want is to increase taxes so much as to offset the increase in govt spending.
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President Barack Obama will wait until the sequester hits to have his first sequester-related face-to-face meeting with congressional leaders on Friday, according to a report by ABC News’s Jonathan Karl:
“A congressional source with direct knowledge of the plans tells me the top four congressional leaders – John Boehner, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell – will meet with President Obama at the White House Friday to attempt to negotiate a way to avoid the spending cuts that both sides have said should be avoided,” Karl reported Wednesday.
Karl reported that the White House arranged the meeting late Tuesday.
According to CNN, McConnell confirmed the meeting in a statement.
“The meeting Friday is an opportunity for us to visit with the President about how we can all keep our commitment to reduce Washington spending,” McConnell said.
“With a $16.6 trillion national debt, and a promise to the American people to address it, one thing is perfectly clear: we will cut Washington spending,” he continued. “We can either secure those reductions more intelligently, or we can do it the President’s way with across-the board cuts. But one thing Americans simply will not accept is another tax increase to replace spending reductions we already agreed to.”
Both Republicans and Democrats have been campaigning to convince the American public that the other side is responsible for any pain felt from the across-the-board cuts.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/27/report-obama-to-wait-until-sequester-hits-to-meet-with-congressional-leaders/#ixzz2MEWHfCrM
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Obama's Sequester Math: $300 Billion In New Revenues Called 'Spending Cuts'
Fri, Mar 01 2013 00:00:00 E A14_ISSUES
Posted 02/28/2013 07:01 PM ET
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inShare. Budget: When President Obama put out his "balanced" plan to avoid the automatic sequester cuts, no one noticed. Which is probably just as well for Obama, given how embarrassingly unbalanced it is.
Last week, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote about how Obama "hasn't actually come up with a proposal to avert sequestration, let alone one that is politically plausible."
Turns out, Obama did have one, although Brooks can be excused for not knowing it, since the administration hasn't exactly been promoting this so-called plan.
That, too, is understandable, since it isn't a plan at all, just a list of numbers with little to back them up.
There are no details, for example, about the $200 billion in cuts to defense and domestic discretionary programs, other than that Obama wants them split evenly.
And while he offers $400 billion in "health savings," 30% are lumped in a bucket labeled "other."
Worse, Obama's "balanced" plan actually counts hundreds of billions of new revenues from taxes, fees and rebates as "spending reductions." Examples:
• His plan to "strengthen" unemployment insurance is labeled as a cut, but it's really a $50 billion tax hike.
• The $35 billion from the federal worker retirement programs involves boosting worker contributions.
• Most of the $35 billion in Medicare savings comes from charging wealthy seniors more.
• The $140 billion in "reduced payments to drug companies" are in fact rebates Obama wants drugmakers to pay Uncle Sam for selling drugs to poor seniors.
• Then there's the $45 billion in spectrum fees and asset sales that Obama lists as spending reductions.
Viewed correctly, it turns out that more than $300 billion — about a third — of Obama's proposed "spending cuts" are actually revenue increases.
As a result, instead of $1.2 trillion in spending cuts called for by the sequester over the next decade, Obama would add more than $1 trillion in revenues, while cutting outlays only about $600 billion. And much of those aren't real cuts, but tiny reductions in projected spending growth over the next decade.
And in the end, his plan, such as it is, will do nothing to forestall the nation's oncoming debt crisis.
After four years, Obama's unseriousness as a president continues to surprise us.
Read More At IBD: Obama's Sequester Math: $300 Billion In New Revenues Called 'Spending Cuts' - Investors.com http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/022813-646267-obama-labels-new-revenues-as-spending-cuts.htm#ixzz2MJPkhQYK
Follow us: @IBDinvestors on Twitter | InvestorsBusinessDaily on Facebook
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I know politicians preen, prance, lie, misdirect and such but Obama's "Sequester Speech" really takes the cake.
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How do the dems get to blame the reps if the sequester happens?
They originally wanted 2.5 trillion in cuts and compromised with 85 billion.
The sequester was obamas idea as well...
And that's if the cuts have the effect political pundits are yelling about
it was not, cantor and ryan are credited with pushing the idea of the sequester and causing boehner to back out of the "grand bargain".
Fuck it, cuts in the bloated military and good, perhaps this will keep you from tanking the world again.
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it was not, cantor and ryan are credited with pushing the idea of the sequester and causing boehner to back out of the "grand bargain".
Fuck it, cuts in the bloated military and good, perhaps this will keep you from tanking the world again.
Didn't Jay Carney come out and admit that the Sequester came from the White House?
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it was not, cantor and ryan are credited with pushing the idea of the sequester and causing boehner to back out of the "grand bargain".
Fuck it, cuts in the bloated military and good, perhaps this will keep you from tanking the world again.
LOL yea its our fault the rest of the world relies on us to keep things going. hahahah go fuck yourself moron, does everyone in canada have small man complex?
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LOL yea its our fault the rest of the world relies on us to keep things going. hahahah go fuck yourself moron, does everyone in canada have small man complex?
It wouldn't be small man syndrome if I am admitting the impact the US economy has on the world you fucking nitwit.
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http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57572180/u.s-capitol-official-obama-wrong-on-janitors-pay-cut
Obama lied - the janitors' pay survived.
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It wouldn't be small man syndrome if I am admitting the impact the US economy has on the world you fucking nitwit.
it would be small man syndrome if you felt that your opinion counted for anything more than the shit from a tick on a homeless dog you moronic foreign fuck...
how about you piss off and worry about your own shitty ass country and leave the grown ups to take care of the important issues...
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To be a fly on the wall to see your faces when it all comes crumbling down.
Will the hubris still be there, ...or will the MadMax environment beat it out of you.
Obama better hurry up and complete that border fence Bush started, if the USA hopes to keep all the corporate slaves from escaping their miserable existence. You think it was designed to keep Mexicans out? HA!
The corporations need as many slaves as they can get. That wall was designed to keep Americans IN!
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To be a fly on the wall to see your faces when it all comes crumbling down.
Will the hubris still be there, ...or will the MadMax environment beat it out of you.
Obama better hurry up and complete that border fence Bush started, if the USA hopes to keep all the corporate slaves from escaping their miserable existence. YOu think it was designed to keep mexicans out? HA! The corporations need as many slaves as they can get. THat wall was designed to keep Americans IN!
hahah fly on the wall?
your own dumb ass country man are bitching about how we ruined the worlds economy when we are still years ahead of the majority of the developed worlds economy.
What the fuck does your dumb ass think will happen if the US collapses all together?
hahah get ready jagson that gold in other ppls hand isnt going to do shit woman. You think canada will survive without the US?
its already proven your economy cant...LMFAO
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hahah fly on the wall?
your own dumb ass country man are bitching about how we ruined the worlds economy when we are still years ahead of the majority of the developed worlds economy.
The US has ruined the world economy, but unilaterally severing the Bretton Woods agreement, stealing all the gold, printing money & exporting inflation along with worthless CDO's internationally.
What the fuck does your dumb ass think will happen if the US collapses all together?
I dunno... what do you think?
As for what I think, I think there will be hell to pay all over the planet.
hahah get ready jagson that gold in other ppls hand isnt going to do shit woman. You think canada will survive without the US?
its already proven your economy cant...LMFAO
Not with current trade agreements no. In it's current state, I don't believe so, ...we 're currently selling 70+% of our goods & services to the USA, and when go broke, it will adversely affect us. Right now your current sequester threatens the free flow of goods between our countries at various border crossings, ...but you know what... if one of our customers (granted a very larger buyer) goes broke, and can't afford to buy our goods & services anymore, ...we'll simply find others. So Canada will survive, but it will be a difficult transition. Understand though, the USA is not the only trading partner on the planet. As for gold being in other people's hands... I hear China has got a lot, as does India. I don't think China with it's BILLIONS of people is going to have a problem picking up the slack. As for MY gold, I can have it ALL delivered into my hot little hands if I choose, ...or keep some on account to facilitate online transactions coming in October. Your only consolation is that Europe is in worse shape than everyone realizes.
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The US has ruined the world economy, but unilaterally severing the Bretton Woods agreement, stealing all the gold, printing money & exporting inflation along with worthless CDO's internationally.
I dunno... what do you think?
As for what I think, I think there will be hell to pay all over the planet.
Not with current trade agreements no. In it's current state, I don't believe so, ...we 're currently selling 70+% of our goods & services to the USA, and when go broke, it will adversely affect us. Right now your current sequester threatens the free flow of goods between our countries at various border crossings, ...but you know what... if one of our customers (granted a very larger buyer) goes broke, and can't afford to buy our goods & services anymore, ...we'll simply find others. So Canada will survive, but it will be a difficult transition. Understand though, the USA is not the only trading partner on the planet. As for gold being in other people's hands... I hear China has got a lot, as does India. I don't think China with it's BILLIONS of people is going to have a problem picking up the slack. As for MY gold, I can have it ALL delivered into my hot little hands if I choose, ...or keep some on account to facilitate online transactions coming in October. Your only consolation is that Europe is in worse shape than everyone realizes.
holy balls yet another uneducated moron yelling for a movement back to the gold standard.
Do you even understand the issues with the gold standard?
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holy balls yet another uneducated moron yelling for a movement back to the gold standard.
Do you even understand the issues with the gold standard?
Yes I do. It protects the people from government private bankers and Monopoly Money stealing the wealth of the people.
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March 3, 2013
Obama’s Fault
By BILL KELLER
Our feckless leaders may be incapable of passing a budget, but, boy, can they pass the buck. The White House spent last week in full campaign hysteria, blitzing online followers with the message that heartless Republicans are prepared to transform America into “Les Misérables” in order to protect “millionaires and billionaires, oil companies, vacation homes, and private jet owners.” Republicans retort that the budget-cutting Doomsday device called sequester was actually invented by the White House.
In fact, the conceptual paternity of sequester was bipartisan. Both sides agreed that Congress should set in motion an automatic deficit-cutting scheme so draconian that it would force a divided Washington to come together around some sane compromise. The scandal is that Washington is so incapable of adult behavior that it can do the right thing only if it is staring down the barrel of a shotgun — and, it turns out, not even then.
Some of this is the fault of a budget-making system that is a mess of special favors, stopgap measures, side deals, promissory notes and flimflam. And, of course, it is true that much of the responsibility for our perpetual crisis can be laid at the feet of a pigheaded Republican Party, cowed by its angry, antispending, antitaxing, anti-Obama base. When it comes to distributing blame for the consequences of sequester — jobs lost, investments put on hold, downgraded credit ratings and withering G.D.P., not to mention the longer lines at airport security — the polls show a plurality of voters are likely to take it out on the Republicans. If all you care about is winning more Democratic seats in the 2014 midterms, then you can sit back and enjoy the show.
But if you care about the long-term health of the country, the president has more to answer for than just inventing a particular type of fiscal time bomb. The large mess we are in is in no small part the result of missed opportunities and political miscalculation at 1600 Pennsylvania. So, while we await the fate of Yellowstone Park and food safety, let’s contemplate the road not taken by the White House — that is, the high road.
When President Obama told us in his first Inaugural Address that our time of “putting off unpleasant decisions” was over, advocates of reforming our fiscal disorder read that as a promise that the new president would go beyond the perennial economic quick fix. After pulling the country back from the brink of depression by pumping some stimulus into the system (thumbs up for that), it seemed plausible that he would make some hard choices to put the promises of government more in balance with its resources.
Instead, the president’s first big initiative was to create an overdue but expensive new entitlement, the Affordable Care Act. I’m not one of those who fault him for putting health care at the front of the line. But Obama emerged from that battle looking like a president who had spent the last of his political capital. And the great fiscal issues remained unaddressed.
His next act was to launch a bipartisan commission to grapple with those “unpleasant decisions” promised on Inauguration Day. In December 2010 the commission, led by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, delivered its list of spending cuts and revenue increases, plus the entitlement reforms necessary to fortify Medicare and Social Security for the surge of baby-boom retirees.
The Simpson-Bowles agenda was imperfect, and had plenty to offend ideologues of the left and right, which meant that it was the very manifestation of what Obama likes to call “a balanced approach.” So did he seize it as an opportunity for serious debate about our fiscal mess? No, he abandoned it. Instead, he built a re-election campaign that was long on making the wealthiest pay more in taxes, short on spending discipline, and firmly hands-off on the problem of entitlements.
If Obama had campaigned on some version of Simpson-Bowles rather than on poll-tested tax hikes alone, he could now claim a mandate from voters to do something big and bold. Most important, he would have some leverage with members of his own base who don’t want to touch Medicare even to save it. This was missed opportunity No. 1.
In the summer of 2011, the president tried to find a grand bargain with House Republicans, and failed. Then, with the Republicans threatening to cut off the government’s borrowing power unless they got budget cuts, the White House and Republicans agreed on a bad bargain: the debt ceiling was raised, and the sequester was launched. There is a strong argument to be made (Noam Scheiber made it well last year in his book “The Escape Artists: How Obama’s Team Fumbled the Recovery”) that the president was unwise to let Republican zealots get away with such blackmail. Authorizing the government to pay the bills Congress has already incurred should be a matter of routine, not ransom. But the sequester was locked and loaded.
Which brings us to missed opportunity No. 2. Remember, the original plan was for the sequester to detonate at the beginning of this year, at the same time as the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. These twin shocks were supposed to work together to drive both parties toward the middle. For Republicans, the horrible prospect of an automatic, across-the-board tax increase (plus sequester’s deep cuts in defense spending) would be reason to come to the negotiating table. For Democrats, the opportunity to extract a little more tax money from the wealthy (plus the threat of cuts to cherished domestic programs) would be incentive to bargain.
But with 2012 winding down, the White House and House Republicans struck another bad deal. They let the Bush tax breaks expire for the top bracket, while making them permanent for everyone else. The sequester spending cuts were postponed until — well, until now.
That year-end tax deal was not a negotiating triumph for the Democrats. Obama wanted $1.2 trillion in new revenues over 10 years. Boehner let it be known he would go as high as $800 billion. By the time the master deal-makers of the White House were done, the “compromise” tax hike was $620 billion. I’d love to be the guy who sells the president his next car.
But the bigger mistake was to do the deal at all. Here we had Washington staring down the double barrels of that fiscal shotgun — automatic spending cuts and automatic tax hikes — and the White House agreed to remove one barrel. Once the tax deal was done, the Republicans, having budged once on taxes, felt no inclination to budge again. As John Boehner would say, over and over, “He’s gotten his tax hikes.” And with Republicans unwilling to revisit the issue of taxes, Democrats had even less enthusiasm for a broader budget bargain that would cut programs they regard as sacred.
If Obama had held firm and let the Bush tax cuts expire for everyone, as some recommended at the time, he would now have at his disposal a powerful inducement for both parties to come together. A bargain could be built around restoring the lower rates for most taxpayers. With an actual, large tax cut at the heart of it, you just might construct the kind of big bipartisan bargain that has been so elusive. But it’s too late for that.
Now that we have entered the sequester zone, Washington has assumed (or is feigning) a mood of resignation bordering on complacency. The Republicans may hate whacking defense, but they don’t hate it enough to offer up any more taxes, regardless of what the polls say. So they have adopted the view that while the sequester may be crude at least it cuts government spending — austerity on autopilot.
Liberal Democrats have found silver linings, too, calculating, as Jonathan Weisman reported in The Times, that the sequester, however ham-handed, is a rare opportunity to cut Pentagon spending. Besides, they say, sequester protects the poor from the worst cuts, and “the process could take pressure off the Democratic Party, at least in the short run, to tamper with Social Security and Medicare.” (God forbid.)
And the president? For weeks he has been playing the game political scientists call “Fireman First.” That’s when scaremongering politicians threaten to cut the most essential services. It’s true, the sequester is a grotesque and hurtful substitute for the kind of reforms the country needs. Bad things will happen. Maybe the furloughs and canceled contracts will stir the public enough to break the impasse. But by the weekend even the president was sounding helpless, if not acquiescent.
Clearly the days of “putting off unpleasant decisions” are not over. And this is where they get you.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/opinion/keller-obamas-fault.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print