Sequester Impact On States Detailed In New White House Reports

[Zacha341]

Article details federal cuts state by state, etc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...ular,sequester

Specific to Michigan:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/defa...s/Michigan.pdf

[guito13]

Question: Why when the goverment asks us to pay a "few percent more" is it "not a big deal" but when the government is forced to cut its budget by "a few percent" why is it "OMG WTF THE END OF THE WORLD!!!??!??!"

[JBMcB]

If the CEO of a company was unable to cut 3% out of a budget he'd be fired.

There must be a dozen project the Pentagon alone could kill that would make up the difference. How about that stupid F-35 program that has failed to produce a reliable fighter after a decade and a half and $1.5 trillion spent?

[Honky Tonk]

If the CEO of a company was unable to cut 3% out of a budget he'd be fired.

There must be a dozen project the Pentagon alone could kill that would make up the difference. How about that stupid F-35 program that has failed to produce a reliable fighter after a decade and a half and $1.5 trillion spent?

Can you imagine, if after 10 years, and THAT kind of spending, @ MegaMotors, the engineers failed to produce a reliable automobile, what would happen to those engineers? But the Gov just raises our taxes, or cuts our services, and keeps on keeping on.

[Papasito]

• Most mandatory spending and some non-defense
discretionary [[NDD) programs are exempt from the sequester
• Since the absolute dollar cuts required - $55 billion to each of defense and domestic – are explicit in the law, these exemptions mean heavier cuts elsewhere


NDD Exemptions
• Pell grants
• Department of Veterans’ Affairs programs
• Transportation programs paid for by the Highway Trust Fund
• Cuts to Indian health and migrant health centers are capped at 2%
Mandatory Exemptions
• Social Security
• Medicaid
• Food stamps [[SNAP)
• Medicare annual cuts are limited to 2% and are made to provider payments

Source: http://bipartisanpolicy.org/sites/de...d%20Impact.pdf

This site is very interesting and worth looking at.
It is laid out in a very well done manner.

Question: Why when the goverment asks us to pay a "few percent more" is it "not a big deal" but when the government is forced to cut its budget by "a few percent" why is it "OMG WTF THE END OF THE WORLD!!!??!??!"

You are SO right. How much have American families had to cut out of our budget due to economic conditions caused by Government and companies the common family had no control of? Government & the big business that pays politicians off cries and screams, and the people always get the short end of the stick.

If the CEO of a company was unable to cut 3% out of a budget he'd be fired.

I wish our country's leaders had these kinds of brains and common sense.

[TKshreve]

If the CEO of a company was unable to cut 3% out of a budget he'd be fired.

There must be a dozen project the Pentagon alone could kill that would make up the difference. How about that stupid F-35 program that has failed to produce a reliable fighter after a decade and a half and $1.5 trillion spent?

Running a private company =/= running a country.

No matter how you slice it.

[JBMcB]

Running a private company =/= running a country.

No matter how you slice it.

I would gander it's exactly like running a large monopoly, one that can put you in jail forever if it wants to.

[Papasito]

Running a country = Doing things and getting away with them every single day that would put you in jail if you were doing them while running a private company.

_____
Bully Tactics From Washington
_____

They traded emails, Woodward said, as he prepared to report that President Barack Obama was "moving the goal posts" around the forced spending cuts, known as the sequester.


That irked the White House, he said Wednesday on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer," and led to the email exchange between Woodward and Sperling.

"They're not happy at all," with what he was reporting, Woodward said.
"It was said very clearly, 'You will regret doing this,' " he continued, intimating a threat.

The part of the email from Sperling to Woodward that used the word "regret" said: "But I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying saying [sic] that [Obama] asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim."

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...iref=allsearch

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/...house-disagree

Thug style Chicago politics at their finest.

[old guy]

Thug style Chicago politics at their finest.

Hey, whatever works. Look who they're dealing with. I have no problem with old style Chicago politics if they provide results. I have all the admiration in the world of Bob Woodward as a journalist. I don't think it was an attack on him personally but a statement that was justified. Again, it's a tough world Papasito. I'm glad to see them playing hardball. We need more of it, and sooner than later.

To make more sense of the e mail, read the entire post. Also, realize that they're not dealing with Bambi or Dumbo. There's a lot at stake here and I'm happy to see they're not just rolling over again.

Here's the full Sperling E-mail:

Bob:
I apologize for raising my voice in our conversation today. My bad. I do understand your problems with a couple of our statements in the fall—but feel on the other hand that you focus on a few specific trees that gives a very wrong perception of the forest. But perhaps we will just not see eye to eye here.
But I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying saying that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim. The idea that the sequester was to force both sides to go back to try at a big or grand barain with a mix of entitlements and revenues [[even if there were serious disagreements on composition) was part of the DNA of the thing from the start. It was an accepted part of the understanding—from the start. Really. It was assumed by the Rs on the Supercommittee that came right after: it was assumed in the November-December 2012 negotiations. There may have been big disagreements over rates and ratios—but that it was supposed to be replaced by entitlements and revenues of some form is not controversial. [[Indeed, the discretionary savings amount from the Boehner-Obama negotiations were locked in in BCA: the sequester was just designed to force all back to table on entitlements and revenues.)
I agree there are more than one side to our first disagreement, but again think this latter issue is diffferent. Not out to argue and argue on this latter point. Just my sincere advice. Your call obviously.
My apologies again for raising my voice on the call with you. Feel bad about that and truly apologize.
Gene

That's 297 words of apology and advice with the "threat" tucked in as friendly advice. As bullying goes it achieves a special level of ephemeral subtlety.
Woodward's reply, again from Politico:

Gene: You do not ever have to apologize to me. You get wound up because you are making your points and you believe them. This is all part of a serious discussion. I for one welcome a little heat; there should more given the importance. I also welcome your personal advice. I am listening. I know you lived all this. My partial advantage is that I talked extensively with all involved. I am traveling and will try to reach you after 3 pm today. Best, Bob

[Papasito]

That's now how Mr. Woodward explained it. He is a long-time Washington reporter, and claiming he felt threatened when he was not is not in his character based on all the prior years of his career.

Re- Government - Trusting it is naive.
It floors me how some people trust Government and want it to grow, to control everything and anything, do not question it's spending or it's practices, and think that it really has the best interest of the people in mind. It doesn't.

Take, for example, this recent Executive Order that directly attacks your rights to your personal property: The Government now has the right to SEIZE your personal property, EVEN IN PEACETIME:

Sec. 201. Priorities and Allocations Authorities. [[a) The authority of the President conferred by section 101 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2071, to require acceptance and priority performance of contracts or orders [[other than contracts of employment) to promote the national defense over performance of any other contracts or orders, and to allocate materials, services, and facilities as deemed necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense, is delegated to the following agency heads:[[1) the Secretary of Agriculture with respect to food resources, food resource facilities, livestock resources, veterinary resources, plant health resources, and the domestic distribution of farm equipment and commercial fertilizer;
[[2) the Secretary of Energy with respect to all forms of energy;
[[3) the Secretary of Health and Human Services with respect to health resources;
[[4) the Secretary of Transportation with respect to all forms of civil transportation;
[[5) the Secretary of Defense with respect to water resources; and
[[6) the Secretary of Commerce with respect to all other materials, services, and facilities, including construction materials.

In reading the entire order, the Government has the authority under it to seize any privately owned property they deem needed in wartime or peacetime.

Private property is dead in this country.
So is the Constitution.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-...s-preparedness

[oladub]

President Obama promised to follow the recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles Commission. It recommended $1 of new taxes for every $3 of spending cuts.... Crickets...He must not have liked the recommendations. Then, by agreement with Congress, taxes were raised on the rich but not has high as they were in Bush days. The temporary tax cut on the middle class, however, were fully rescinded. The sequester was President Obama's idea but now he is trying to blame it on Republicans and demand more new taxes without spending cuts. The sequester was supposed to be about working our cuts; not developing new taxes. Even with sequestration, federal government spending will continue to grow.

Since the most recent increase in the budget ceiling, the President and Congress have stuffed billions of dollars of non Sandy related items into the Sandy emergency bill, given the Muslim Brotherhood government of Egypt F-16's and tanks, and have started providing for Syrian 'rebels'. Those must have been higher priorities than having air traffic controllers, keeping nations parks open, and all the other things the Obama administration says it will do to punish US citizens if their elected representative refuse to raise their taxes.

There are ways of cutting $85B which don't victimize US citizens with service and job cuts or new layers of taxation. Senator Rand Paul has a plan which would shave off $85B without layoffs. One of his proposals would be to cut foreign aid in half. That, by itself, would save $20B a year and eliminate a quarter of the sequestration punishments that the President is threatening.

I looked at the Presidential list of threats for Wisconsin. Almost everything on the list had to to with programs for which the federal government doesn't even have delegated powers and should be eliminated anyway.

[TKshreve]

Amusing:

Re- Government - Trusting it is naive.
It floors me how some people trust Government and want it to grow, to control everything and anything, do not question it's spending or it's practices, and think that it really has the best interest of the people in mind. It doesn't.

Now take out "government" and re-insert any powerful entity. What a generic paragraph that was. Here are a few examples:

The GOP. Capitalism. Main Stream Media. Corporations. WalMart. Matty Moroun. Wall Street. The Pentagon. State Governments.

[Papasito]

Amusing:



Now take out "government" and re-insert any powerful entity. What a generic paragraph that was. Here are a few examples:

The GOP. Capitalism. Main Stream Media. Corporations. WalMart. Matty Moroun. Wall Street. The Pentagon. State Governments.

That doesn't make it OK

[rb336]

Private property is dead in this country.
So is the Constitution.

Private property was never an absolute right in this country. The government can seize any property "for public use" as long as they compensate the owner for it.

[rb336]

Re- Government - Trusting it is naive.
It floors me how some people trust Government and want it to grow, to control everything and anything, do not question it's spending or it's practices, and think that it really has the best interest of the people in mind. It doesn't.

Who wants that, exactly? Yes, sensible people want to prevent corporations from running roughshod over the environment and individual rights - I like having a lake clean enough to swim in, and rivers clean enough to eat the fish I catch, and a water table with safe drinking water. I don't want children working in mines and factories, I don't want hard working people to need assistance just to subsist. I don't want a government that pushes laws based on religious texts of bronze-age superstitions or magic golden tablets shown to a wannabe prophet or from someone who wants to clear thetans from my soul. I don't want the government telling me what I can or cannot write.

corporations can and do try to control what their employees do - people are fired for drinking the wrong kind of beer or making comments their employers find offensive -- all done off-premises and off working hours

[firstandten]

Oladub, just to shed a little more light on Simpson-Bowles because I know you have referenced the plan more than once and I think your inference was that Obama was hypocritical about wanting to reduce the deficit therefore the reason for not endorsing the plan. Essentially without going into a lot of detail, the commission as created, was political gamesmanship. Obama knew based on past dealings with the party of "no" if he had embraced the plan it wouldn't go anywhere. If you knew what was really in the plan you could see why. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...impson-bowles/ Obama said as much to Mr Bowles. He stated he wanted to use the commissions recommendations as a framework to cut a deal with Repubs however if he put his arms around the deal immediately Repubs would have killed it. I think we all know that rarely does the direct approach work in Washington.

[JBMcB]

Here's a fun video of the Secretary of Transportation trying to explain how awful the sequestration cuts will be for the FAA, while dodging questions about why the FAA's budget has ballooned by 40% while air travel has decreased by 10%.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Za4JFro1Mg

[oladub]

Oladub, just to shed a little more light on Simpson-Bowles because I know you have referenced the plan more than once and I think your inference was that Obama was hypocritical about wanting to reduce the deficit therefore the reason for not endorsing the plan. Essentially without going into a lot of detail, the commission as created, was political gamesmanship. Obama knew based on past dealings with the party of "no" if he had embraced the plan it wouldn't go anywhere. If you knew what was really in the plan you could see why. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...impson-bowles/ Obama said as much to Mr Bowles. He stated he wanted to use the commissions recommendations as a framework to cut a deal with Repubs however if he put his arms around the deal immediately Repubs would have killed it. I think we all know that rarely does the direct approach work in Washington.

President Obama created the Simpson Bowles Commission by executive order. I think that he originally intended it as more than theater. 11/18 of the commission representatives whom he appointed to the commission voted in favor of it although a super majority of 14/18 was required to put an official stamp on the plan. 6/7 of those who voted against it were Republicans. However, there was a plan of which which President Obama made the following remarks;

Obama Promised That “Once The Bipartisan Fiscal Commission Finishes Its Work, I Will Spend The Next Year Making The Tough Choices Necessary To Further Reduce Our Deficit And Lower Our Debt.” [[President Barack Obama, Remarks At The Cuyahoga Community College West Campus, Parma, OH, 9/8/10)

• President Obama Said His Fiscal Commission “Can’t Be One Of Those Washington Gimmicks That Lets Us Pretend We Solved A Problem.” “[[President Barack Obama, Address Before A Joint Session Of Congress On The State Of The Union, 1/27/10)

Didn't happen.

“A year after appointing a bipartisan commission to recommend ways to deal with the debt, Obama would bypass almost all of its painful prescriptions to cut huge benefit programs like Social Security and Medicare.” [[“Obama’s Proposed Budget: Some Cuts, But Not The Slashes Republicans Request,” The Associated Press, 2/14/11)

“The commission tackled the tax code, discretionary spending, Medicare and Social Security. Obama ignored the report of the commission, which he appointed and was co-chaired by former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson and former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles. Instead, he proposed a federal budget that avoided all those hard decisions. By its own projections, the Obama budget had the national debt growing to $21 trillion.” [[Editorial, “It’s Time To Dust Off The Simpson-Bowles Plan,” The Des Moines Register, 11/26/11)

WARREN BUFFETT: I think what happened with Simpson-Bowles was an absolute tragedy. I mean here are two extremely high-grade people. They have somewhat different ideas about government but they’re smart. They’re decent. They’ve got good senses of humor, too. They’re good at working with people. They work like a devil for ten months or something like that. They compromise. They bring in people as far apart as Durbin and Coburn to get them to sign on and then they’re totally ignored. I think that’s a travesty.” [[CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” 11/12/11)
-

[lpg]

Private property was never an absolute right in this country. The government can seize any property "for public use" as long as they compensate the owner for it.

And just for the sake of asking, what recourse do you have if they don't compensate you, just take what they want ? Good luck fighting them in court.

[firstandten]

President Obama created the Simpson Bowles Commission by executive order. I think that he originally intended it as more than theater.

I think he did as well, but it was a political calculation that he was making as well as indicated in the quote from Time magazine "The common thread is that Obama played the commission report in 2010 too safe. As I report in the story, former President Bill Clinton also urged Obama at the time to embrace the report. Instead of going big and trying to rally the American people, Obama waited for Republicans to counter with their own deficit reduction plan, attacked it partisan and extreme, and then only came back to the middle with a detailed plan this summer, when Tea Party passions were peaking around the debt ceiling calamity. It did not work.
There was good political logic behind Obama’s cautious strategy. He was hoping a big deal could be crafted in private, and he knew that his public embrace of Simpson-Bowles in late 2010 would make it radioactive to Republicans in the House, who already said they opposed it, while infuriating the left by endorsing entitlement cuts without further negotiating. "

Obama already knew the history of these Presidental Commissions in that for the most part they aren't very effective except in rare instances. However he was holding out hoping the Repubs and Dems could strike a grand bargain behind closed doors[[based on Simpson-Bowles) which is the way DC use to work. He should now understand those days are over for now and to get your agenda thru you have to box your opponent into a corner, make sure you have the votes and just ram it thru. Which is btw a big reason why nothing is getting done in Congress, it is in a constant state of gridlock or when something must get done or gov't will shut down they put some temporary measures in place and kick the can down the road some more.

[firstandten]

And just for the sake of asking, what recourse do you have if they don't compensate you, just take what they want ? Good luck fighting them in court.

The US Constitution requires the government of "just compensation" to the owner of the property being taken. The question of course in cases where the gov't is being sued by the owner is what constitutes just compensation ?

[oladub]

...He should now understand those days are over for now and to get your agenda thru you have to box your opponent into a corner, make sure you have the votes and just ram it thru. Which is btw a big reason why nothing is getting done in Congress, it is in a constant state of gridlock or when something must get done or gov't will shut down they put some temporary measures in place and kick the can down the road some more.

The President's overuse of executive orders and his selective choices of laws he wishes to enforce is a way around Congress although questionably Constitutionally or ethically. Both Republicans and Democrats have kicked the can down the road. I don't see any other possibility of resolving the budget issue except by adopting the Simpson Bowles plan. Paul Ryan's plan would only have taken the edge off of this mess. Rand Paul's budget plan to balance federal spending in five years would work but even a lot of Republicans are caught up in buying votes too. The Paul budget plan is unviable without any Democratic and not much republican support. That leaves the Simpson Bowles plan as being the most viable option unless we have a one party Obama junta after 2014. Maybe that's what the American people will want by then. Anyway, there is nothing stopping the President from fulfilling his original promise to make "the tough choices to further reduce the deficit and lower the debt". If Republicans don't want to reduce the deficit and lower the debt, they too should be replaced.

In today's news after sequestration has become law: John Kerry yesterday announced that the US will give away more money to the Muslim Brotherhood government of Egypt. It was only three weeks ago that the President, every Democratic Senator, and 22 Republican Senators voted against an amendment that would have prevented the giving away of 20 F-16's and fifty tanks as part of a $1.6B foreign aid package. Now John Kerry has promised another $190M of an eventual $450M for one thing, another $60M of an eventual $300M for Egyptian entrepreneurs and young people, and the mention of another $1B in U.S. assistance promised by President Barack Obama last year. This is insane. This thread led off with article about all the ways Obama plans to punish Americans under sequestration unless he has new taxes but he, and everyone in Congress going along with this, still have all sorts of money to give to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood government. Time to invest in burka stocks. Crazy.

[Danny]

Politics in America is like this riddle:

"WHAT GROWNS BENEATH THE PUNIC CURSE! AND STRANGLES IN THE STRINGS OF PURSE. BEFORE SHE MENDS, MUST SICKEN WORSE! TEN YEARS, FIFTY DAYS AND THREE, THIS PERSON SHALL GIVEN BE A GIFT. BUT ALL DESIRE, BUT HE. BUT WHEN HE'S DONE AND NO MORE HERE. NINTEEN HUNDRED YEAR OR NEAR. THIS PERSON SHALL SPEAK CLEAR"

[Zacha341]

^^^^ Growns or groans... Help!

[rb336]

it's from I, Claudius, although the original makes fun of Claudius' reputation as a stammerer