Who said anything about short term? I think we should examine foreign aid line by line, cut military waste (particularly for R&D for weapons that never become part of the useful equipment), look at consolidating departments where it would be efficient...all kinds of things. While the indiscriminate cuts caused by the sequester are clearly not the way to go, that does not mean that we should not look at savings by streamlining operations, cutting unnecessary levels of government and reducing what we pay to other nations. Oh, and a simple "oops, I misconstrued your post" would have sufficed.
lmao Maxine Waters thinks 170 million job cuts will result from sequestration. How does an imbecile like this get elected? <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/u8-d95SO_3g" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
I dunno.. How did Sarah Palin become governor of a state? How did Louie Gohmert become a United States Congressman?
The sequestration process is entirely short term. This is what you are arguing in favor of. Uhhh...why??? We could quadruple the foreign aid budget or alternatively abrigate the entire thing- and it would not make 2 ****s worth of difference w;r/t govt borrowing or deficits or etc. No- i think im on the right track.
Well, it wouldn't be the first time you were wrong. I responded directly to a poster who referenced spending cuts in general rather than the sequester specifically. I can't help it if you either didn't take the time to actually read the posts or if your reading comprehension is that poor. The sequester is a bad idea. That does not mean that examining the budget with long term cuts in mind is a bad idea.
I think the point has been made repeatedly that it isn't the amount of money but rather what programs it is hitting.
And if you are talking such a small amount of money (relative to what we need to cut) then where its cut is trivial. If you have a problem where the money is being cut then write Obama a letter. He owns the sequester.
This proves how idiotic Oblamer's campaigning has been recently. Seriously, dude, you're not fooling anybody.
Oh noes...the 1st shoe has fallen... http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/...ite-house-cancels-tours-citing-sequester?lite The White House is canceling tours of the president's famous abode starting next week, saying the budget cuts that went into effect last week are to blame. A phone recording on the call line for White House visitors informs callers that White House tours will be canceled, starting this weekend. "Due to staffing reductions resulting from sequestration, we regret to inform you that White House tours will be canceled effective Saturday March 9th, 2013 until further notice," the recording says. "Unfortunately, we will not be able to reschedule affected tours. We very much regret having to take this action particularly during the popular spring touring season." Advertise | AdChoicesThe reason for the cancellations, an official with the Secret Service told NBC News, is because the Uniformed Division Officers normally tasked with securing the tours will be reassigned to other security posts at the White House. The move will reduce overtime costs and may reduce the number of furloughs the Secret Service could potentially face, according to the official. It is unclear how many Uniform Division Officers will be impacted by the sequester. The Office of Management and Budget calculated that the Secret Service may need to cut as much as $84 million from its budget due to the cuts. Though the White House made the ultimate decision to suspend tours, their conclusion was based on staffing decisions the Secret Service has been forced to make, according to a White House official. The move, which Republicans paint as a publicity stunt, prompted at least one proposed legislative fix from a GOP congressman Tuesday. In an amendment to a GOP stopgap budget bill headed to the floor later this week, Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas, suggested that no funds from the bill be used "to transport the President to or from a golf course until public tours of the White House resume." House Administration Committee Chair Candice Miller, R-Mich., said in a statement that the canceled tours are "wrong" and invited tourists to Washington D.C. to tour the Capitol instead. "I believe closing the doors of the White House to the American people is wrong," she wrote. "I want to let those Americans planning a trip to Washington, D.C. know that the Capitol will remain open and encourage those wishing to visit to contact their member of Congress or the Capitol Visitors Center to schedule a tour." As required by law, President Barack Obama ordered the automatic cuts into effect last Friday night. The broad budget reductions came after Congress and the administration failed to reach an agreement to avert the sequester.
Rising Democratic Star Says Obama 'Needs to Be a Leader' on Budget Rep. Joaquin Castro denounces Congress but says the president also bears responsibility. “I think you’ve got to bring everybody to the table. We’re going to have to figure out a way to make sure that we’re dealing with our debt in a long-term way that’s not squeezing everything into this short period of time,” the lawmaker replied. “We believed that we are hopeful, that [Republicans] will give on some of these tax loopholes, closing some of these tax loopholes – that we’ll do it in some kind of balanced way.” He urged his colleagues to stop fighting over the debt limit. “Let me get back to my question,” I said. “Does the president have any responsibility?” “Oh, absolutely,” Castro replied, “absolutely.” “What could [Obama] have done better?” “I think that he needs to be a leader in the negotiation, that he has a responsibility to bring both sides to the table, to be clear about what he's offered and what he expects from the other side,” the freshman said. “And also I think that my sense in Washington – independent of the president or [House] speaker or Senate majority leader – is, a lot of battles are fought out in the media rather than talked out in person. People tend to communicate in the press a lot,” Joaquin Castro said. “That may work on a lot of issues, but on something like this, that’s not the right way to go.” http://www.nationaljournal.com/poli...obama-needs-to-be-a-leader-on-budget-20130306
No point in trying to negotiate with people whose position is to oppose anything you are a proponent for. They have tried repeatedly to work with the right and it leads to nothing because the party is broken/corrupt, and votes against thier own self interest in spite of the president. There is no point is trying to reason with a crazy person. Until the right decides it wants to be an adult, negotiation is a waste of time.
Right or wrong, Reps aren't closing any tax loopholes ("raising taxes as they call it"). They will have to find the cuts from somewhere and tackle the loopholes as a separate issue later.
Why Sequester May Be Exactly the Right Policy for the Economy What if the sequester that everyone thought we must desperately avoid turns out to be exactly the right policy? One useful intellectual exercise is to assume that our political system is smarter than individual politicians or parties. Call it the wisdom of crowds, or the Efficient Government Hypothesis. The idea is that the outcomes our system produces are better than the positions of those who seek to influence the outcomes. So the combination of the sequester and the start of the year Obama tax hikes is telling us something that almost no one in politics today argues: We can afford short-term deficit cuts produced by spending cuts and tax hikes, and we can safely ignore the long-term deficit. Now keep in mind that this is exactly the opposite of what appears to be the consensus. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is probably the most prominent proponents of the view that the U.S. needs to adopt a Augustinian approach to deficits: Lord save us but not now. The basic idea is that the economy is so weak that the government needs to run short-term deficits, but the long-term deficit is so scary that it needs to be addressed as soon as possible. The primary dissent from this view comes from Republicans who argue that the U.S. government has a spending problemand a deficit problem. They say that both long-term deficits and short-term deficits need to be addressed right now. Which means that the actual policy we've adopted — short-term deficit cuts while ignoring long-term deficits — has nearly zero supporters (the notable exception being CNBC's Larry Kudlow). Any decent contrarian should at least ask: Could we have stumbled upon the right approach? http://www.cnbc.com/id/100523870
no not that it will matter by mid-2014 or even late-2013. debt deleveraging. now just need to reregulate those Wall Street suckers to make sure the reason why there is such a long-term deficit in the first place is addressed. As I have said probably 9000000 times.
What what Mr Castro failed to realize is that Obama was very very busy that week leading up to the deadline. He was playing golf with Tiger Woods and other 1 percenters including Jim Crane.
All Republicans cheat to win and all Democrats sit and drink coffee and let their purity carry them to victory. In a fair election every single elected position would be held by Democrats because they are the righteous few. You know the sequester is bad when the White House has to fire the unpaid volunteers that run the white house tours.
