It is truly amazing that Congress appears to be totally helpless to avoid the sequester. And it really comes down to one thing. The Republicans can’t bring themselves to compromise. It’s basically a refusal to acknowledge the result of the election. The Democrats campaigned on a balanced approach to the budget that acknowledged the Republicans’ fervent ideological desire to shrink the size of government. It’s not like the Democrats, on their own, would do anything like what they are offering the Republicans. Most amazingly, even the Republicans would not insist on such draconian economy-killing cuts if they were in total charge of the government. Yet, in the minority, they insist on budget policies more extreme than they would enact on their own.
The result will be chaos and disruption, a predicted loss of 750,000 jobs, a significant drop in GDP, broken contracts, furloughed workers, food shortages, loss of federal law enforcement power, military unpreparedness, long lines at airports, and more and stupider things as well.
The only way to avoid it all is for the Democrats to cave to every demand.
How much longer must this country endure the GOP?
Part of me feels like the Democratic Party has enabled some of this behavior. I listened to Bill Nelson use the most milquetoast reluctant language to criticize Ted Cruz for basically calling Chuck Hagel a traitor to his country. Harry Reid says that he was shocked that the Republicans filibustered his nomination.
No one respects that kind of weakness.
The media will not expose the Republicans for their extremism so I can only hope they go too far and the mushy middle turns on them.
Rachel noted that Chris Hayes has been invited to CPAC. Now that would be a worthwhile watch.
We have made headway. Fox viewership down to 12 year low. No longer are Dems hiding the word ‘liberal’ behind their hands when they speak of identity. UP with Chris Hayes this morning, as usual, gave a stunning portrayal of the Dem positions capped with Ari Melber giving a loud and declarative ‘get over it’ analysis of the Deficit.
And yet Marsha Blackburn can sit front and center before the camera and rail on and on about how she’s only doing her constituents’ bidding, 750,000 jobs lost be damned, they’re Patriots!
“The Democrats campaigned on a balanced approach to the budget that acknowledged the Republicans’ fervent ideological desire to shrink the size of government.”
Was that, in retrospect, a mistake?
It was an unusual election; one party fought the election, inter alia, on how they’d run the country if they won, and the other party on how they’d not run the country if they won.
All they need to know about running the country is what St. Ronaldus Maximus said: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I”m here to help.'”
Let the sequester take effect. Actions have consequences. Obama has already mapped out across-the-board 8% cuts, holding harmless entitlements, veterans benefits, and military pay.
And yes, it is increasingly as a self-inflicted wound by the squishy Democrats in the House and Senate who could quickly bring an end to this nonsense with a little unity and some willingness to do some strong messaging back home. Or even to engage in some old-time actual political conversation with constituents in which they stop posturing and told it like it is. And asked for constituent’s practical advice about policy direction. (Yes, it really used to happen.)
Of course the question you are really asking is “Exactly when will the moneybags yank the GOP’s string?”
The phrase “across the board” worries me. Can’t the administration tailor the cuts to cause maximum pain to Republican districts and minimium pain to Democratic districts?
I’m afraid that there is going to come a point very, very soon where the choice will be either to capitulate or to call the bully’s bluff and see what kind of shit they’re really made of. The American people have to be made fully aware that the GOP is willing to destroy the entire economic health of the country by placing ideology over the well being of it’s citizens.
Up to this point, the President has kind of been able to thread the needle. But the eye of that needle is pretty much closing a little more every day. The clock is ticking.
Why do I continue to think the Republican controlled congress is a group of economic terrorist. Every few months they take the economy hostage and all to favor the top 1% percent.
I guess elections, two in row by significant margins, do not have consequences if the minority can stop progress at every turn. Lately, I can barely stand to read about the latest block and the latest b.s. from the House.
Two in a row?
I assumed that meant 2 presidential elections in a row. But we all know what they say about assuming…
Yes, two presidential elections in a row. Also, we retained the senate despite earlier predictions of the contrary.
President Obama called it a “manufactured crisis” in his State of the Union. He is ready to bring out the big guns, and the R’s are blind, deaf and dumb.
If they right wing drives us over this cliff, they will be destroying their brand for generations to come. The mid-terms will be a slaughter of any Republicans not in the deep south, and Obama’s pie in the sky liberalism of the SOTU will become law. It would be devastating for millions of families across the country, and who knows what across the rest of the world, but it would be the end of the Republican Party as we know it, too, and perhaps the rebirth of real Keynsianism.
If….and it’s a big if, people show up in 2014 to vote. We know, almost with a certainty, that the crazies are going to show up. Especially if the GOP in is full throttle suicide mode and actively destroying the government. To them it will just be another sign that their reps are doing god’s work and that the return of Jesus is on the fast track. It will be their duty to their god to help drive the spike into the heart of the evil government zombie, once and for all. This is fast taking on the characteristics of a religious crusade.
Those 750,000 that get laid off will be motivated to vote. For example, I would not want to be the republican rep whose district contains a military base….say FT. Hood TX.
I read earlier today that the majority of the Military assets that will be affected are in Democratic Districts and that is why the Rs are okay with letting the Sequester happen. To hurt Dems.
The only way to avoid it all is for the Democrats to cave to every demand.
I don’t think that’s quite it. After all, look what Boehner is demanding: “…the sequester will be in effect until there are cuts and reforms that put us on a path to balance the budget in the next 10 years…” Without any new revenue, of course.
So if you look at what it would take to balance the budget in 10 years, what it comes down to is that the only way for the Democrats to avoid the sequester is to accept even deeper cuts. Why in the hell would they cave on that? It’s like they’re threatening to cut your finger off unless you shoot yourself in the head.
the GOP has chosen to commit ECONOMIC TREASON agains this country.
The GOP doesn’t care. They don’t give two shits unless they get their way, 100% of the time. And what do they want? It seems like they want whatever Obama does not favor, which is to say that they don’t really have any specifics. Their budget is a mashup of Paul Ryan’s Galtian fantasy, unicorn math, and Calvinball.
And the Village Idiots do not care as long as they get to show up on their Sunday morning talk shows, drink their coffee, and act like they are omniscient, nonpartisan commentators. Oh, and get paid large amounts of money to spew two-bit political tripe that I could do hung over. Too bad the sequester doesn’t impact them directly, because then we’d hear a lot of high pitched squealing about how important an issue it was.
Fuck this country’s political reporters for being useless hacks, fuck the vast majority of rural people who live in this country and tend to send complete backwater morons to Congress against their own economic interest, fuck the rich-money Republicans who prey on the ignorance of the others, and fuck the entire Republican Party. They do not deserve to win any kind of election ever again. Keep the goddamn South and let them fall into the Third World status they would be if they didn’t take in all of the tax dollars from blue states.
It is so frustrating to see what is going on in this country. I don’t feel like things were this messed up in the past.
It’s the tyranny of the minority who LOST two elections and are hell bent on destroying what the majority wants even in a compromise. It makes me sick what Republican governors are doing with Obamacare too.
I wonder what it feels like to win. Do you have to win 3 elections? 4?
‘unicorn math’….ha my new phrase to respond to any and all fact challenged republicans.
Weird how their “balanced approach” doesn’t actually appear to require any compromise. Unless I forgot when the party’s liberal base suddenly became all about agricultural subsidies and tax cuts for oil producers.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/14/sequester-cuts-senate-democrats_n_2687872.html?1360873430
Let’s face it, both parties are desperate hostage-takers trying to run the same long con on each other with the country in the balance. Make the numbers big and irresponsible enough, and eventually one side will crumble. Trillion dollar numbers bandied about on cocktail napkins became routine political strategy instead of a sign of fucking insanity. They all voted for it. The president signed it. It’s law. They’re all implicated.
One side is obsessed with raising taxes on the 1% as a focus of their political program. The other side refuses to consider taxation period under penalty of torture. And actually cutting spending is an absolute pain in the ass to actually try and implement. Somebody’s gonna lose their job or get furloughed; somebody’s getting money that they’ve come to depend on taken out of their pocket. It sucks. So here we are.
If we go through the sequester, I am screwed.
It is a manufactured crisis, one that the president played an active part in creating. He didn’t need to listen to their bullshit about the debt limit, but he tried being too cute by half thinking it would get entitlement reform.
If the GOP shoulders the blame, maybe it’ll be worth it. But I doubt that they will, which is why I suspect they’re not keen on avoiding it in the first place.
20% paycuts to federal workers over 11 bi-weeks (almost half a year) isn’t going to be helpful on top of their already-frozen pay. It’s going to cost me about $10,000 out of my pocket.
Uh, no. His plan is obviously to trap Republicans into raising taxes on the wealthy (that he couldn’t marshal his own party into passing) under the specter of national emergency and economic crisis.
I know his opinions on “entitlement reform” and they are not what you tar him with. Primarily because his record consists entirely of massively expanding benefits and reducing corporate welfare, you know, instead of the other way around. But that’s just empiricism talking. Go on paying no heed.