Sequester lies
Yesterday, the president surrounded himself with first responders while he lectured the American people on the impending spending cuts in the government known as “sequester”. from the Washington Examiner;
“Emergency responders like the ones who are here today — their ability to help communities respond to and recover from disasters will be degraded,” he said. “Border Patrol agents will see their hours reduced. FBI agents will be furloughed. Federal prosecutors will have to close cases and let criminals go. Air traffic controllers and airport security will see cutbacks, which means more delays at airports across the country. Thousands of teachers and educators will be laid off. Tens of thousands of parents will have to scramble to find child care for their kids. Hundreds of thousands of Americans will lose access to primary care and preventive care like flu vaccinations and cancer screenings.”
Since when are teachers, child care providers, doctors and nurses, police and fire fighters federal employees? Those services are paid for with local taxes, not federal funds. Of course, that’s the kind of scare tactics to which we’ve become accustomed over the last few decades. I noticed that the President didn’t bother to mention that the whole sequester thing was one of those bright ideas which came out of his White House, yet somehow it’s Congress’ fault.
The Defense Department is staring down the barrel of 700,000 job losses 495,000 of those jobs are in the DC area, which might be uncomfortable for the White House. The Washington Post says that the sequester might result in a quarter-point jump in the unemployment rate.
Of course, it’s all because the Administration is holding out for higher taxes instead of meaningful spending cuts. And, oh, yeah, they think that they can depend on savings from withdrawal from Afghanistan for spending reductions. You know like that savings we were supposed to have from the withdrawal from Iraq – no one is talking about that magical surplus which never materialized.
Congress isn’t ready to raise taxes again, so Obama is stuck playing the blame game. From the Washington Times;
GOP House Speaker John A. Boehner said Tuesday the House has twice passed a plan to replace the so-called sequester with “common sense cuts,” but Mr. Obama has so far been unwilling to find enough savings from overhauling Medicare and Social Security. The president, he said, is relying too heavily on plans to increase taxes again.
“Just last month, the president got his higher taxes on the wealthy, and he’s already back for more,” Ohio’s Mr. Boehner said in a statement. The Democrats’ “new-found concern about the president’s sequester is appreciated, but words alone won’t avert it.”
Also from the Times, sequester is forcing defense contractor to send jobs overseas;
First Line Technologies of Chantilly, Va., makes cooling vests for troops to wear underneath their body armor and employs about a dozen people. Having experienced rapid growth last year, it was readying to hire about a dozen more workers before the uncertainty over sequestration developed, company President Amit Kapoor said.
Now, First Line Technologies is looking to market its products overseas and will hire employees abroad. Its strategy is to move quickly into overseas markets to avoid layoffs or having to close.
We still have 47 months of this shit ahead.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Congress sucks, Defense cuts, Taxes
“We still have 47 months of this shit ahead.” Yes, we also have 47 months of this shithead.
Mark Levin, a fellow I greatly admire, focused on this issue in his radio show yesterday. He pointed out that the independent Gov’t Accounting Office identified billions of cost-cutting measures that could be enacted, many of them involving multiple agencies unnecessarily and wastefully doing the same thing as one another. The 2011 GAO report was the first of its kind, pursuant to new law which mandated that the GAO “identify federal programs, agencies, offices, and initiatives, either within departments or governmentwide, which have duplicative goals or activities.” Not a single one of the identified cost-cutting measures has been effected. Not one. And it’s no wonder because the GAO itself cautioned that the actions needed to reduce spending “will require some difficult decisions.” And difficult decisions are not what obamaman and the Congress want. Here’s the report if you want to see it.
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-318SP
But he thought it a good idea when he proposed it??? Oh. I forget. Someone else was supposed to come behind him and fix it.
Besides, he never was then and is not now seeking actual solutions to problems. It’s all just political theater to him and his kind.
Gee, this sure doesn’t match the Soviet model of military and/or government spending. The Soviet Union went broke spending money hand over fist on weapons development, spies, the Red Army, the Soviet Navy and Air Force. Major jobs in the government sector, too, e.g., science and all its byproducts were the venue of the government.
Hmmmm….not following the plan by his role models.
47 more months of this idiocy. Where’s the bacon? Bring home the bacon, Mr. Obama, we voted for you, where’s the bacon? (Detroit city council) Dead silence.
I see two choices here: you can sit around complaining, or you can have a whale of a good time making fun of this stubborn, ignorant, incompetent, spoiled brat fool.
Face it: he got the job based on glitz and glamor, and he’s too damned incompetent to do it. I shudder to think what might happen if a real emergency came up. Oh, wait! the Benghazi embassy; Hurricane Sandy — we’ve already had two and NOTHING. Did you all know that there are still people who lost their homes to Hurricane Sandy living in shelters?
Anyone who actually had any kind of management skills could have straightened out this mess to some extent, but instead, it’s only become worse and worse, and guess who gets to pay for it?
I am SO GLAD I did not vote for that clown.
Since as chief executive the President is the one who is responsible for implementing the cuts, which are slightly over 2% of the budget, do these dog and pony shows mean that these are his priorities in making the cuts.
@3. It is political theater but it’s theater with purpose. He is actually doing what he said he would: fundamentally transform America. Everything he does is coached and calculated. He is leading the country to ruin in ways most folks can’t–or won’t–see. I tell you, I am becoming more and more convinced that oif the House of Representatives does not say NO! to EVEYTHING obamaman wants and YES! to EVERYTHING he doesn’t, we will see some form of unpleasant revolution.
And the GOP will cave for the promise of future negotiations.
Where they will cave again.
Absodamtively, AC! The country could survive somewhat peaceably were only one segment of society being threatened, but practically everyone is being threatened with having something taken away from them by these true believers or as a result of their policies. Right/left, urban/rural/suburban, and all up, down and sideways on the economic/educational spectrum have been purposefully pitted against each other. None of this is an accident.
“Magical Surplus”
Magic indeed sir, similar to the Clinton Surplus. There is no surplus when you are spending what you don’t have, it’s just less of a deficit.
Someday folks on the left may actually understand simple economics, but I am not holding my breath.
VOV…wise choice considering Nobel-laureate Paul Krugman is one of those idiots who can’t seem to make that connection. Then again, what he and the rest of the left don’t/won’t/can’t admit is because there hasn’t been a budget passed in FOUR YEARS now, that “one-time” stimulus is being spent EVERY YEAR as it is part of the baseline budget. To pass a budget now would expose this administration and Democrats in Congress for the frauds they’ve always been.
What about the billions of dollars in Medicare waste and fraud that he claimed he could only fix if reelected?
Apparently there is a rule against fixing shit in your first term. That is the bye round, spend your time blaming the previous guy and running for reelection.
All this shit talk about spending, and no one mentions the multimillion dollar vacations that B. Hussein Øbama & Family treats themselves to every few weeks as well as what the DC politicians treat themselves to on our dime!
Which one would you rather have:
The conspiracy theory that space aliens have invaded Earth and are taking over?
Or the conspiracy theory that da prez is leaving us wide open for external attack?
I’m finding the space alien conspiracy more and more attractive. It’s less annoying.
I am very cynical that we are being played for suckers. The sequester cuts 85 billion this year only half in defense, about %7 of the budget. Yes its proportionally a bigger hit on national defense than entitlements. Now the supposed effect is to cancel carrier deployments, flight time, and other High visibility stuff. Its like other times in budget cuts when they threaten to close the Statue of Liberty, Yellowstone and the Washington monument; layoff teachers, police, and firefighers. Never do they threaten to layoff the Third Assistant Director for Diversity.
The calculus runs this way:
In 1995, Congress (at the time, both chambers were controlled by the GOP, and the Speaker was Gingrich) lost the PR war against Clinton when the US government shut down for a few days.
Clinton engineered the shutdown, and with a very willing press, won the battle. The shutdown was all about re-election in 1996 and a stronger legislative position.
Now Obama has engineered a government shutdown. Only one chamber is controlled by the GOP. We have seen several small crises like gun control and amnesty and gay-anything manufactured not as a serious attempt at governance, but to blame Republicans. That worked extremely well in the campaigns.
Only problem: Obama’s voters are loyal to whomever pays them. When the money stops coming, they turn elsewhere – to the liberal Republicans (a redundant term) – whomever will pay them.
Obama has 3 options:
Break the law, again, and just keep printing money and paying his voters.
Become President of the US of A, by governing this Nation – even (gasp of Prognazi horror) compromising with the GOP against the conservatives.
Flood the zone with stories and events blaming Republicans for every thing. Shoot for control of the House in 2014, and encourage two of the older conservative Justices (Scalia and Thomas) to retire. And as for those voters now going cashless? Too late for them – their only hope of a life in permanent retirement is to continue voting for Obama’s bread and circuses.
Just an FYI. The Federal Government does provide billions of dollars in grants to states and billions to the states for health care ASIDE from “just” Medicare and Medicaid. So yes the sequester will effect teachers, firefighters police, nurses and doctors.
A few things:
1. Immediately after the original deal Boehnner, Ryan, McConnell et. al were all falling over each-other saying how they got one over on that rube Obama. Remember who claimed they got 98% of what he wanted? Now all of a sudden they’re claiming it was ALL that guy.
2. Even Woodward, whose reporting on this I find to be extremely slanted against the President, claims that the GOP’s efforts to say they have nothing to do with the sequester is absurd.
3. This is entirely the GOP’s fault, regardless of who came up with the idea of the sequester. This was the first time in history that any party decided to use the debt ceiling as a blackmail device. Itwas THAT decision that necesitated the sequester deal and the bad policy that followed.
Yes, i am aware that President Obama did vote against a debt ceiling increase as Senator. That was a POLITICAL statement that the opposition in both parties have used over the years to hammer home a point. There is a difference between that and using it to blackmail. Dick Durbin has pointed out that he too has voted against increases. But he says it is one of those votes that you take AFTER you make sure ther’s enough to make sure it will pass.
I don’t think voting-to-make statements is proper either. But that NORMAL politics. Governing through debt ceiling extortion is something no party has done until last year. And it’s leading to horrendous consequences. And the GOP is responsible for it.
Sippy…scooter…son…no. Just no.
And weren’t you claiming to be in Ohio during the election runup? You might want to scrub the voter rolls to cover how many times you voted there, bud.
Oh, and back on topic…Obumbles got a $140 Billion tax increase just this year alone but putting a bunch of union hacks around him and crying about the sand in his vagina about HIS “cuts” which aren’t in fact cuts at all? Yeah, sorry, I and millions of other middle class families are doing with less.
‘Bout time you fuckers learned to do the same. Suck it up, cupcake.
OMG, funding levels will go back to…….2012 levels!!! Oh the horror, the HORROR!! How did the government ever function at that Draconian funding level….AAAHHHHH!!!
Sippy, $44 billion this year is what we’re talking about. It is estimated that Medicare alone made $44 billion in improper payments last year. This “sequester” is an abject joke. Obama is making ridiculous claims for fearmongering purposes and with useful idiots out there repeating his baseless claims he doesn’t need to worry about the pesky truth getting out. Layoff 800,000….what a joke. They don’t need to do that but if it looks like they can blame someone else for it for points they’ll do it. The President is willing to layoff 800,000 when he doesn’t have to just to make the other guy look bad….he really cares about paople you know…
@ Sippy … The Word of the Day on the O’Reilly Factor last night was “Insipid”. Congrats … you made the big time! However, the manner in which the word was used was not very flattering for you!
Bob Woodward, along with Carl Bernstein, exposed the shenanigans that led to the Watergate affair and the downfall of the Nixon Administration. In case skippy has forgotten, Nixon was a Republican.
And in regard to being slanted against Obama, Woodward sat in on meetings regarding the budget, etc., and took copious notes. When the 10/2012 debate rolled around, BO denied that anything regarding sequestration came from the White House.
“Woodward reported that White House Office of Management Director Jack Lew and Legislative Affairs Director Rob Nabors took the proposal for sequestration to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and then it was presented to congressional Republicans. Following Monday’s debate, Woodward stood behind his reporting which, he said, drew upon sources involved in last year’s (2011) deficit talks and is supported by detailed notes.
Obama’s statement about sequestration cannot be squared with Woodward’s account. Here is what the president claimed:
First of all, the sequester is not something that I’ve proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed.
But Woodward is clear that the Obama administration proposed the sequester to Congress.
Moreover, the White House backed away from Obama’s claim to the contrary. Here is how Jay Carney tried to spin Obama’s debate deception:
What the president said last night (10/23/12 debate) was a reiteration of what his position has long been.”
Bob Woodward has hardly slanted his report AGAINST Obama. He’s slanted it TOWARD the truth, something that skippy and others prejudiced against the truth seem to be unable to accept or understand. He’s been around too long to be fooled by cheap tricks and government lies and denial.
Slanted against Obama? Woodward and Bernstein uncovered the crap going on with Nixon. Nixon was a Republican. Along with millions of other Americans, I watched the Watergate hearings on TV. Still think Woodward is slanted?
For pete’s sake, skippy, just how dumb are you?
Or is it that you just can’t stand the truth?
Insipid’s post disputes itself;
This was the first time in history that any party decided to use the debt ceiling as a blackmail device.
Followed by;
Yes, i am aware that President Obama did vote against a debt ceiling increase as Senator.
And Woodward is biased against the Obama Administration, huh? I think Woodward is just biased against anyone but himself. Only a halfwit backed in a corner and impervious to facts would use that as any sort of excuse to forgive the Administration for their blatant lies.
People like Insipid are the reason we can’t have nice things.
Well, well. This is a surprise.
http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/21/17049138-obama-reaches-out-to-republican-leaders-as-budget-cuts-loom?lite
Not.
Just to clarify, or clear up a point you made in the first part of your post. I am a Firefighter/Paramedic for the government. Myself and all the guys in my station are federal employees. We are what are known as federal firefighters. The are many of us throughout the world working for the US Army, US Air Force, US Marine Corps, US Navy, and US Coast Guard. We are civilians who were prior military firefighters and medics (the majority of us). Our motto is “Protecting Those Who Defend America”. We are all certified firefighters through the Department of Defense. Most, if not all of us have gone through fire school at Goodfellow AFB or it’s predecessor, Chanute AFB.
By the way, we are considered “essential” government employees and are not subject to the furloughs. Just wanted to shed some light on that. Thanks. Love the website.
Wow, so many suckers for the snake oil salesmen in congress. Way to go, nitwits. Can you do any REAL research or do you just hate black people that much?
@24: no. We simply don’t drink the DU Kool-Aid, evaluate the facts, and think for ourselves. And we don’t view the entire world through race-colored glasses.
Think for yourself much?
#24, if your pals at DU, Kos, and HuffyPoo told you that eating a bowl of dog turds was good for you, would you do that? I think so. Put down the Kool-Aid and look at the facts, little dropout fool!
Someone’s selling snake oil? Who? Is it at Walgreen’s? Did I miss the coupon in the Sunday paper again?
@24 Why is it every time there is a disagreement about the shitbag in the Oval Office you guys on the left pull out the race card? Obviously, disagreeing with the most lying, disingenuous, cover up president in recent history is a race thing right? Has nothing to do with his record, his lies, his smoke and mirrors. I don’t give a shit what color the ass hole is, he is F’d up beyond all recognition and history will show him to be worse that Jimmy Carter as a do nothing but will show him as a tyrant when it comes to screwing over the middle class and America at large by holding everyone hostage for his agenda.
@27 I have the coupon for the snake oil and the Kool Aid if you want them.
Is it for the Burmese python oil or the Monty Python oil? I hear that one of those works on the rheumatiz in yer joints.
I got news for #24 – Obama is making Nixon look like an amateur.