I’m hearing more and more my job is on the line, and not a furlough, but gone entirely.
If they just axed the Blue Angels instead, they could save about 300 jobs that actually help with airline safety.
You’ll get your wish then, but no the result you want. The Blue Angels will be parked in April, along with a carrier air wing. Ultimately, four carrier air wings will be grounded and two others maintained at a minimal readiness level in order to meet overseas deployments.
Remember, this was Obama’s idea. It’s ironic to watch him, fresh from his golfing weekend with Tiger, tell the press that this is "stupid’ - IT WAS HIS PLAN!
Cue the “it’s Bush’s fault” liberals in three, two, one…
Right now, your average American doesn’t give a shit whose idea it was. Besides, both parties agreed on it. They (rightfully) expect congress to fix it. Instead, they’re playing political tug-of-war and the American people are the flag. I think Americans deserve better from their elected officials.
Hey, who let Bob Woodward in here?
I agree with you. Unfortunately, though, most Americans don’t seem to agree, because we keep electing same types of guys over and over.
To those of you who may be losing your jobs: you have my sympathy. I had not heard of positions being eliminated entirely due to this, just cutbacks. Though I’m a contractor everyone at my office claims we won’t be hit by this (the Project Manager keeps saying things like “now that this is a program of record we’re safe” like I will know what that implies).
Yup, Obama agreed to these cuts as did the Congress, but only because the Tea Partiers in Congress were threatening financial apocalypse for the country by not raising the debt ceiling. Remember, Boehner and the President had a deal, then the Tea Idiots told their Speaker no dice.
You’ll agree to a lot of stuff with a gun pointed at your head.
The problem is folks aren’t willing to unelect their own gerrymanded Congressman to fix it. Or can’t becaue well, they’re gerrymandered and their vote doesn’t count. That produces idiots on both the left and right (they gotta pack all those non-white “Aliens” somewhere) The US is starting to suffer from a massive case of identity politics.
If my job goes due to this, eventually some airplane is going to crash due to thinking it’s just fine when it’s super-foggy or a thunderstorm going on.
Also, flip the situation with a Tea Party pres and a Democratic congress. THe Tea Paty guy would be vetoing, and the Dems would have a budget passed. It’s the Tea Party that wants to shut down the government.
I have to admit, it’s hard not to blame the Tea Party for much of the dysfunction in government, if only because they so proudly wear the partisan mantle. Tea Party candidates swept to victory in 2010 on blunt promises never to compromise. These are people who begin with non-empirical “Truth” and try to force reality into that mold.
From the Republican perspective, Obama negotiated in bad faith: he got revenue increases already, and dares come, hat in hand, to ask for more. From the Democratic perspective, the Republicans are bucking the mandate handed Obama by voters last November, when the country decisively rejected conservative policies and essentially signed of for higher taxes to sustain certain valued programs.
In theory, Republicans are getting what they said they wanted: cuts to government. The White House, meanwhile, appears to have determined that the only avenue left to it is the bully pulpit. Obama doesn’t appear to have the political savvy to secure a deal on the Hill. What he does have, however, is a “name and shame” strategy. Unable to avert sequestration, he has chosen to heap blame on the Republican Party and hope that conservatives drive their elected officials to action out of a shared sense of catastrophe.
Unfortunately, with the next election so far off, and conservatives happy to blame Obama for the whole impasse, I don’t see how this is going to turn out a big victory for the President, even if I also think that Republicans will come out with the most political bruises (since, after all, a majority of American voters already approves of Obama’s agenda anyway… at least more than they approve of the Republican strategy).
The President doesn’t need a victory. He’s gotten all the votes he’ll ever get. What he knows is that the only way to close the deficit hole as much as the sequester does is to raise revenue, unless we cut social programs to the bone.
He’s smartly not giving in to that.
The thing that drives me crazy is how doom and gloom everyone is being over what, to me, seems like a modest budget cut, especially to the military. But suddenly we’re at risk of more terrorist attacks and we can’t possibly cut our capability due to job losses.
So is the reality that we can only ever increase the size of the military? Any money we attempt to cut is going to mean someone looses their job.
Frankly, I feel like we should be able to cut our military expenditures by as much as 25% and still be OK. We’d still spend more than the next X countries combined.
Yes to this for sure. Eisenhower knew what the problem was back in the 50s, and it’s still just the same today.
Sure, you can cut spending but what about our current global commitments? We’d have to scale those back in equal measure with the defense cuts and that’s awfully difficult.
I don’t at all disagree that Obama is correct about how best to address the deficit. I am also aware that, in a system based upon compromise, those willing and able to hold hostage the entire system are most likely to succeed. The Tea Party gave Republicans a mandate to avoid any kind of compromise on revenue increases. It is also clear that Obama is not a very effective politician.
The reality is that, for political reasons, both parties find it expedient to make cuts that don’t affect the majority of taxpayers, but instead hobble government itself… as if government employees or private businesses that service the government are expendable. The whole point of the sequester was to target sacred cows. And most government agencies are all payroll. Very few have extensive capital investments.
The problem is really cutting our military at a time when we are (A) still fighting a war in Afghanistan, (B) still trying to stabilize two regimes in an especially difficult part of the world, © working to realign our entire national security strategy, (D) rebuilding our forces after more than a decade of constant war, and (E) transitioning our force from one focused on counter-insurgency to one capable of conducting counter-insurgency as well as conventional war. I suppose it is partially a question of degrees, but I’m inclined to accept that there is less slack than ordinarily there would be.
Ideally, we’d make savings by reducing the cost of medicine. Of course, there are always winners and losers, and in that case the losers would be healthcare administrators and drug companies – but only, again, by degrees. I just think that there is more slack to cut in the excess profits of that industry than in defense.
We have more important things than those commitments, most of those countries need to pay their fair share as is.
From a macroeconomic perspective, if we cut Defense we should increase other government expenditures by the same amount or more-- say, in early childhood education, mental health and drug treatment, and of course public infrastructure.
Politfact is amusing today, in their analysis of John Boehner’s “There’s no plan from Senate Democrats or the White House to replace the sequester.”
It didn’t take us long to find the White House plan. We found it on the White House home page by clicking the prominent button that says “SEE THE PLAN.”
…
Pants on Fire!
While both of these characterizations are getting a lot of media play these days, I feel like both are incorrect. In the budget fight earlier, Obama got revenue increases, but not nearly what he asked for. Republicans managed to force Obama to settle for less. Similarly, just because Obama won in November doesn’t mean there is a massive mandate for his agenda (although, frankly, the fact that he literally ran on raising taxes and still managed to win does mean there is likely some support for “raising revenue”).
The sad truth is that neither Democrats nor Republicans really have much incentive to negotiate at this point. Until there’s widespread discontent in districts at home, there’s no reason for either side to actually come to the table in good faith (and until districts aren’t gerrymandered to all hell, there’s little reason to operate in good faith anyway, but that’s a discussion for another day).
Widespread discontent that lasts until 2014 is what Obama wants, especially if it’s directed at the House. The only way Obama gets what he wants is if the House changes in 2014. A massively disaffected House will do this, though it risks losing the Senate.
That’s incredibly pessimistic. I seriously doubt that Obama wants widespread discontent. Regardless of whether you like him or agree with his politics - or any president, for that matter - he wants to improve things for as many Americans as possible.
Obama wants to get his agenda passed, because he thinks it’s best for the country. If some short-term pain is part of that, he doesn’t like it or want it, but it would help the country long-term (though it might cost my job, then again if he doesn’t win my job could be gone, I am so nervous right now)
Believing that the President is anything other than willing to bend over backwards for a deal on the budget is just nuts. The guy’s willing to serve up all sorts of Democratic sacred cows (Chain indexing SS benefits, raising Medicare retirement age, means testing). The idea that he’s just trying to foster discontent is nuts and the height of dishonest false equivalency.