Sequestration next Friday? Repugs say "Bring It On"

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Repgus say it's all Barry's fault for not agreeing, caving in to, 100% to Repug extreme austerity and wanting to balance cuts with with tax hikes. Repugs absolutely refuse ANY tax or revenue increases.

America and DC are so ed and un able.

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the silly, dishonest jerks Simpson-Bowles are back with their Cat Food 2.0 austerity

The new, real Simpson-Bowles plan: Less revenue, more cuts


Because that's what Fix the Debt is all about, as Meteor Blades wrote. It's "a corporate lobby whose proposals for dealing with the nation's public debt include giving some of the most profitable corporations a tax windfall of $134 billion on their foreign earnings, much of which is now held in overseas tax havens." And how does that work? By making big cuts on the domestic spending side. Here's what the plan says:

• Reduce Medicare and Medicaid spending by improving provider and beneficiary incentives throughout the health care system, reducing provider payments, reforming cost-sharing, increasing premiums for higher earners, adjusting benefits to account for population aging, reducing drug costs, and getting better value for our health care dollars (Feb-Dec 2013)
• Enact comprehensive, pro-growth tax reform that eliminates or scales back most tax expenditures, with a portion of savings from tax expenditures dedicated to deficit reduction and the additional savings used to reduce rates and simplify the tax code (Feb-Dec 2013)
• Strengthen limits on discretionary spending (Feb-Dec 2013)
• Reduce non-health mandatory spending by reforming farm subsidies, modernizing civilian and military health and retirement programs, imposing various user fees, reforming higher education spending, and making other changes (Feb-Dec 2013)
• Adopt chained CPI for indexing and achieve savings from program integrity (Feb-Dec 2013)

In true B-S fashion, the proposal is heavier on deficit-hysteria rhetoric than concrete policy proposals. How big will those discretionary cuts be? They don't say. Are there any specific policy recommendations beyond the chained CPI for Social Security and veterans benefits? Of course not. This is all about "pro-growth tax reform" that means more corporate tax breaks, and "enacting serious en lement reform," which of course means starving grandma because, they note, “the aging of the population represents a significant driver of our growing debt.”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/0...28Daily+Kos%29

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You've Heard of the Birthers, Now Meet the Simpson-Bowlers


In the original Simpson-Bowles Catfood Commission plan, the pair sought a whopping $2.9 trillion in budget cuts combined with $2.6 trillion in revenues – a fancy word that mostly describes increasing taxes or eliminating tax loopholes.

Under the new Simpson-Bowles "Catfood Plan 2.0," this pair of crackpots now seek just $1.3 trillion in revenues, meaning they jacked up budget cuts this time around to a staggering $3.9 trillion. While the original Catfood plan had roughly one-to-one spending cuts to new revenue, the new Catfood plan is three-to-one in favor of cuts to revenue.

Simpson-Bowles "Catfood Plan 2.0" calls for $2.4 trillion in new savings over the next 10 years, through "serious tax and en lement reforms and cutting additional spending." So what are the exact devastating cuts and reforms that Simpson and Bowles want to make in federal government spending?

First, they want to reduce Medicare and Medicaid spending, meaning fewer and fewer elderly Americans will have access to healthcare and medications.

Next, Simpson and Bowles want to enact "comprehensive, pro-growth tax reform" which is really just a fancy way of saying "we want to give corporations even more corporate tax breaks while jacking up taxes on working people."

Of the $2.4 trillion in new savings that the Simpson-Bowles "Catfood Plan 2.0" calls for, nearly $600 billion of it comes from so-called tax reform.

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/ite...impson-bowlers

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Sequester of Fools

But you aren’t interested, are you? Almost nobody is. Messrs. Bowles and Simpson had their moment — the annus horribilis of 2011, when Washington was in thrall to deficit scolds insisting that, in the face of record-high long-term unemployment and record-low borrowing costs, we forget about jobs and concentrate exclusively on a “grand bargain” that would supposedly (not actually) settle budget disputes for ever after.

That moment has now passed; even Mr. Bowles concedesthat the search for a grand bargain is on “life support.” Let’s convene a death panel! But the legacy of that year of living foolishly lives on, in the form of the “sequester,” one of the worst policy ideas in our nation’s history.

Here’s how it happened: Republicans engaged in unprecedented hostage-taking, threatening to push America into default by refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless President Obama agreed to a grand bargain on their terms. Mr. Obama, alas, didn’t stand firm; instead, he tried to buy time. And, somehow, both sides decided that the way to buy time was to create a fiscal doomsday machine that would inflict gratuitous damage on the nation through spending cuts unless a grand bargain was reached. Sure enough, there is no bargain, and the doomsday machine will go off at the end of next week.

There’s a silly debate under way about who bears responsibility for the sequester, which almost everyone now agrees was a really bad idea. The truth is that Republicans and Democrats alike signed on to this idea.

As always, many pundits want to portray the deadlock over the sequester as a situation in which both sides are at fault, and in which both should give ground. But there’s really no symmetry here. A middle-of-the-road solution would presumably involve a mix of spending cuts and tax increases; well, that’s what Democrats are proposing, while Republicans are adamant that it should be cuts only. And given that the proposed Republican cuts would be even worse than those set to happen under the sequester, it’s hard to see why Democrats should negotiate at all, as opposed to just letting the sequester happen.

So here we go. The good news is that compared with our last two self-inflicted crises, the sequester is relatively small potatoes. A failure to raise the debt ceiling would have threatened chaos in world financial markets; failure to reach a deal on the so-called fiscal cliff would have led to so much sudden austerity that we might well have plunged back into recession. The sequester, by contrast, will probably cost “only” around 700,000 jobs.

But the looming mess remains a monument to the power of truly bad ideas — ideas that the entire Washington establishment was somehow convinced represented deep wisdom.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/22/op....html?hp&_r=1&

[Winehole23]

the silly, dishonest jerks Simpson-Bowles are back with their Cat Food 2.0 austerity

reality is what's in the cat bowl, boutons.

if policy hastens austerity somehow, have no doubt it was already waiting in the wings, with or without policy's permission.

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reality is what's in the cat bowl, boutons.

if policy hastens austerity somehow, have no doubt it was already waiting in the wings, with or without policy's permission.

the austerity will come not from explicit policy, but from not regulating finance, enabling Banksters Great Depression 2.0

Where do you see, Mr Doubtless, austerity waiting in the wings?

[Winehole23]

the austerity will come not from explicit policy, but from not regulating finance, enabling Banksters Great Depression 2.0

the problem imho is the lack of any political will to resolve large financial ins utions when they fail. regulation is important, but secondary to the socialization of financial risk inho.

Where do you see, Mr Doubtless, austerity waiting in the wings?

At the moment I can clearly see two jackasses on a bulletin board. Past that, things start to get fuzzy.

you're much the better fortune cookie.

[Winehole23]

strike that: bitter

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"Where do you see, Mr Doubtless, austerity waiting in the wings?"

[TeyshaBlue]

"Where do you see, Mr Doubtless, austerity waiting in the wings?"

TB thinks he can tate responses on an Internet forum. GFY, less.

lol hypocrite much?

[TeyshaBlue]

delicious sauce is delicious

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TB

I'm asking, not "mocking" or " tating". learn2contextualize

[TeyshaBlue]

TB

I'm asking, not "mocking" or " tating". learn2contextualize

I was asking:

http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/show...=1#post6263744

I simply copy and pasted your response.

Again. Hypocrite much?

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Is there a quote for this?

I really do not feel like reading through shazspam and the OP was just boutie characterization.

[TeyshaBlue]

It's boutastic.

[Winehole23]

"Where do you see, Mr Doubtless, austerity waiting in the wings?"

I don't foretell the future. I'm not a bitter fortune cookie.

[Wild Cobra]

Repgus say it's all Barry's fault for not agreeing, caving in to, 100% to Repug extreme austerity and wanting to balance cuts with with tax hikes. Repugs absolutely refuse ANY tax or revenue increases.

America and DC are so ed and un able.

Why do you always lie?

Revenue can be increased without tax increases. It's called increasing the tax payer base. More tax payers equal more revenue. Get people off their duffs, and working!

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Why do you always lie?

Revenue can be increased without tax increases. It's called increasing the tax payer base. More tax payers equal more revenue. Get people off their duffs, and working!

You're an ideological maran.

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Macaca Jindal at it again

Top Republican: Obama Should Avoid Looming Budget Cuts By Delaying Health Care To Millions

JINDAL: Just delay the Medicaid expansion, delay the health care exchanges so they can work with states on waivers, on flexibility. You can save tens of thousands of dollars there and you’re not even cutting a program that’s started yet — just delaying.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/02/24/1631421/top-republican-obama-should-avoid-looming-budget-cuts-by-delaying-health-care-to-millions/

How about a Congressional vote to KILL the suicidal Sequester Bill? nah, too adult, too responsible, too serious. Show Down political theatre is FUN, AND it allows the Repugs to prevent Congress and the Exec from actually governing the country forward, from solving problems.

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Governors Issue Warning on Impact of Cuts

Governors in both parties warned on Sunday of the potentially damaging consequences across the country if President Obama and Congress do not agree on a plan to avoid across-the-board spending cuts that are scheduled to take effect beginning on Friday.

With the prospect of a last-minute agreement in Washington increasingly unlikely, the governors said the scheduled cuts would have a grave impact in a wide range of areas, including the military, Border Patrol and the overall economy.

“The effects will be significant, and people will feel them,” Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado said on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.”

“There’s been so much uncertainty,” said Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona, who also appeared on the program. “It’s really going to hurt our economy.”

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2...er=rss&emc=rss

What a great way to run a country! Leader and example for the planet!

[Winehole23]

Congress passed it, Obama signed it. there's plenty of blame to go around for this contrived crisis.

[Winehole23]

the calculation that Republicans would be unwilling to countenance cuts to defense turns out, apparently, not to have been correct.

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Many Repugs have said they want to except defense from cuts, so as no to endanger The Most Kick-Ass-Military Country Ever!

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Congress passed it, Obama signed it. there's plenty of blame to go around for this contrived crisis.

But it's the Repugs who absolutely REFUSE any tax increases, no "balanced" deficit reduction.

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VIEWPOINT: The Debt Everyone Is Freaking Out About Does Not Exist

If we stopped adding to it tomorrow, the debt as it stands would pose essentially zero threat to the country’s fiscal health, as the ongoing growth of the economy would send our debt-to-GDP ratio dropping like a rock.

So the debt that’s got everyone worried is the part we haven’t yet incurred. And that debt, by definition, does not exist. It’s not a certainty, it’s merely a projection by the Congressional Budget Office. And trying to model how the federal budget, not to mention the entire American economy, will behave years or even decades in the future is a devilishly treacherous business.


For instance: one of Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) favorite talking points in 2011 was that the computer simulations CBO uses to model the economy crash when they attempt to account for the debt load in 2037. Imagine trying to model the 2011 economy in 1985. Things you’d never see coming include (among other things) the Internet, fracking, massive advances in computing power, the renewable energy boom, three wars, a massive recession, and Harry Potter. And predictions can be hard even over shorter time frames. In 1995, CBO predicted the deficit in 2000 would be well over $200 billion. We ran a surplus of $236 billion.


In fact, Ryan plastered dramatic graphs of debt going out 75 years onto everything in sight while stumping for his last budget. Forget predicting 2011 in 1985. That’s like predicting 2011 in 1940.

The entire purpose of health care reform, whether we keep Obamacare or get Ryan’s preferred replacement, is to change those trends by changing the structure of health care markets — how we buy, sell, and deliver care. That should slow health care cost growth, making it less expensive for the government to pay for health care through Medicare and Medicaid.


But CBO really doesn’t have the tools to model those kinds of structural changes. Its analyses are generally limited to hard spending cuts or revenue increases. CBO Director Doug Elmendorf told Ryan as much during a hearing, which Ryan took to mean his premium-support scheme for Medicare might work better than CBO estimated. But the point applies equally to Obamacare’s reforms, for example.

Yet we’ve already cut non-defense discretionary spending to 40-year lows, endangering all sorts of investments in America’s infrastructure, health, safety, communities, and future productivity. And that’s before the sequester kicks in. This massive failure to invest or aid saps the economy’s skills, education, networks, and future prospects. The longer unemployment and stagnation drags on, the more damage we do to Americans’ abilities to prosper, and the less we’ll be able to grow the denominator over the coming years.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/201...oes-not-exist/