And is the economy thus going to be kneecapped for the remainder of the year? Or will they come to a sensible “kick the can down the road” solution in a week’s time?
I have faith that the congress and our President will find a way to kick the can out to probably June.
Is it possible someone is actually making money by them doing this? (sarcasm font)
Sequester happens for a week or two, followed by some can kicking.
Tellingly: there’s no movement on actually avoiding it, everyone’s just positioning for the upcoming blame game.
As if the deficit were an actual problem (to a substantial extent, Dick Cheney was right about that)…
I vote yes, until some poll numbers start rolling out. If the Repubs do get the brunt of the blame, lots of fast results will follow.
Here in DC we’re starting to see some lobbying by various defense contractors who see their profits evaporating this year if this happens. The local news is starting to run segments talking about all the impacts that the cuts will have on local business, etc. In the next couple days I suspect that will start to spill out into the national-level news as people start to wonder exactly what effects this will have on their day-to-day lives.
I guess Panetta came out yesterday and said that he’d be furloughing about 800,000 civilian defense employees for the better part of a man-month next year if the cuts go through… not a bad tactic considering that means that Blue and Red states will be hit almost equally – Texas would lose $290M in payroll and California would be hit by $419M – with Purple Virginia hardest hit with residents losing $660M. It puts pressure on both sides to try and find a compromise.
And it’s crazy that we’re even talking about that now, since the entire point of creating the sequester legislation was to put pressure on both sides to find a compromise. My bet is that they’ll find some way to just cancel the sequester and move forward with broken business as usual. Then, we’ll pretend then whole manufactured debt ceiling “scandal” never happened.
I think it will happen, unless Boehner throws himself on the sword to save us from it. He might, but I won’t count on it as extremely likely. GOP problem with this political fight, is that if they compromise on this issue, radicals will go into open rebellion and they will effectively lose majority even before 2014. Plus compromise here is all but guarantees far-right challanges in primaries during 2014 and unelectable candidates making it difficult or impossible to keep control of Congress past 2014.
On a positive note - once sequester goes into effect there will be some great investment opportunities.
Thing is, we don’t even NEED a f*cking “compromise.” Just keep deficit spending as usual. Actually, the federal government should spend more right now (God knows there’s enough crumbling infrastructure to employ a couple of million unemployed within the next three months), and taxes should not be raised further right now. Demand needs to come back so we can have sufficient growth and full employment, then the resulting tax revenues will reduce the deficit on their own.
I disagree with the above.
Just because deficit isn’t a short term problem, doesn’t mean that a day when it becomes short term problem is never going to arrive.
“Now is not the best time to do all of it” is a valid position, but it is not necessary exclusive with “lets do something right now” stance.
Deficit isn’t even a long-term problem so long as it doesn’t go to the kind of ridiculous extremes we’ve seen resulting from our recent foreign adventurism.
The nature of money, accounts, and debt is different for governments (at least those with their own strong currencies) than for businesses and individuals; it’s not bad to run in the red if you’re a government and you in fact create the money in the first place. It’s especially good to run in the red if people are willing to loan you all the money you ask for at ludicrously low interest rates, which is currently the case; you can always cut back on your borrowing some when interest rates go up again because you will be making money from your own lending or from increased tax revenues connected to both inflation and “real” growth.
Deficit is only a problem if it looks like you won’t actually be able to pay your debts at some point; this question is obviously at the heart of the national debate on the subject. But in and of itself there’s nothing wrong with deficit, just as there’s nothing especially good about running a surplus as a government if your country is otherwise in a recession or has problems that could be addressed through increased spending.
The only time that a US federal deficit is a problem is if it outstrips the productive capacity of the real economy and causes generalized demand-pull inflation. At anything like our current jobless levels this is a non-concern.
Yeah, I think a reasonable course here would be “let’s do something of this magnitude, but amortize it over the rest of the decade (starting next year)” The problem is, legislating the future doesn’t really make things happen, it simply shifts starting point for future debates.
No real movement will occur until both parties have a good solid sense of how the blame game will play out, so the fact that they are preparing that discussion is actually movement towards a solution. It’s not like they need weeks to creatively problem-solve, they are simply establishing which compromises they will or will not be forced to go with.
Just found out there’s a good possibility I will be furloughed/hours cut due to this.
Thank your teabaggers.
Both my wife and I will be hit with what amounts to a 20% pay cut (actually a bit more than that) from April to October if this train wreck is not avoided.
Blaming just “tea baggers” is not productive. ALL of congress in currently on VACATION this week. It’s not one party or another, or even one faction within a party that got us here. We’ve NEVER had a budget under the current administration…even when their party controlled congress.
Throw them all out. ALL OF THEM. Even your congressman that has steered oh so much work to your hometown. Your gain, someone elses loss. THROW THEM ALL OUT. Does that make me a teabagger for saying that? I’m actually pretty middle of the road politically, but these fuckers are making me sound like a radical.
FUCKERS!
I’m certainly blaming the side that is willing to do this. Say what you will about Dems, but they wouldn’t shut down the government over a disagreement. They’re not the party of cut non-military spending for tax cuts for the rich.
I have no idea how much of any cut I will get. I do know it’s likely though.
I feel your passion, believe me. My apathy stems from the belief that throwing these fuckers out will just bring a fresh batch of fuckers in. I don’t see a way to get congress into a productive state between lobbyists, voter biases, and staunchly defended party lines. It’s going to take a serious shake up to free the log jam that is Washington.
I’d lay more blame on the Democrats if the current bunch of Republicans hadn’t demonstrated so clearly that they were unwilling to budge on anything. An I do mean Republicans, not tea baggers, since the old line leadership has been very vocal in obstructing just about everything.
It’s going to take one party winning everything. 2008 was a golden opportunity, but the Dems hadn’t learned their lesson at that time.
The current system rewards obstructionism by whoever isn’t in the White House. When things go to hell, you can blame the president’s party since it’s a “lack of leadership” and half the country will believe you. You don’t even need a majority to do it, with filibuster rules and such, although obviously you can do more if you have that. All you really need to do is figure out a way to spin it for your home district/state such that they believe it wasn’t your fault.