Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

White House releases report on the effects of Sequestration – $100 Billion cuts, not good!

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MSNBC –

Forced by Congress, the White House was required to report on how the Sequestration will effect the budget, on a line by line basis. The results are bad, very bad. My question is what are the leaders of our country going to do something about it? And when? Do they really have to wait till after the elections for “anything” to get done regarding the Bush/Obama tax cuts and the Sequestration? The full report from the White House is here.

“…most defense programs face a 9.4 percent cut, while most domestic programs would be sliced by 8.2 percent. Medicare would be trimmed by 2 percent, while other entitlements — not counting Social Security — would be sliced as much as 10 percent.”

Here are some of the hits from the story which will be coming…

    Army operations and maintenance would lose nearly $7 billion
    Navy more than $4 billion under a looming series of automatic cuts in federal spending
    Educational achievement and special education programs would be shaved by $2.3 billion
    Hospital insurance would fall $5.6 billion
    Inquiries and investigations — a mainstay of the Republican House — would lose $11 million
    Salaries and expenses in the House of Representatives would drop by $101 million
    Defense Department operations and maintenance would lose $3.9 billion next year alone
    Pentagon health care would be cut by $3.3 billion
    Air Force and Navy aircraft procurement would be sliced by more than $4.2 billion
    Funding to strengthen Afghanistan’s security force the year before the United States plans to withdraw its own forces would Fall by $1.3 billion
    The National Institutes of Health would lose $2.5 billion
    Rental assistance for the poor would fall by $2.3 billion
    Food stamps would lose $543 million
    The Federal Bureau of Investigations would lose $735 million for salaries and expenses
    The Customs and Border Patrol budget would fall by $823 million, and the budget for the border fence — virtual and physical — would drop $33 million

Will a deal be reached on this? I just can’t see how Congress survives by making these cuts. It’s time for Simpson-Bowles and it’s time for our leaders to grow some fortitude and make the tough choices we all “hear” about.

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Comments

  1. I see $20 billion in defense fat that I wouldn’t miss for a second. Nor would I miss the border fence. As for the broader question of “I just can’t see how Congress survives by making these cuts”, it’s because many in Congress cater to people who’d rather make these cuts than ask all citizens to pay their fair share by increasing revenue. And from your postings, I’m pretty sure you’re one of the people who enables this foolishness.

  2. I don’t have a problem with half of the list. It was cleverly ordered to try to hide some of the fat in the Pentagon that’s finally being sliced.

    • If you look at the story from MSNBC, they listed a number of the cuts showing how it was hitting many differing areas. I took that list in the EXACT order of the story. So if anyone was “cleverly listing” them to try and hide something, it was the person who wrote the story and I don’t think their purpose was hiding anything. Seriously?

  3. It was designed to be awful – so awful that nobody could tolerate it. What’s pathetic is to watch Republicans, including Paul Ryan, who actually voted for the thing, now say that they think it should be cancelled without actually solving the problem it was designed to solve.

    There will be no deal until the lame duck session after election day. At that point, something will be cobbled together to avoid sequestration.

    • Thanks for pointing it out. Is it pathetic to watch Democrats who actually voted for the thing, now say that they think it should be cancelled…

        • I get it. From now on just answer these questions with excuse #3, it will save you and others typing time/energy…

          • Gravity always acts the same; the speed of light never varies; Republican irresponsibility and obstructionism under Obama never stops.

            If you think any of the above are untrue, please, offer evidence.

            Otherwise, you’re just engaging in precisely the sort of partisanship that you expect Democrats to somehow overcome. Why don’t you find your hypocrisy unbearable?

            (Your own medicine is quite tasty, no?)

            • … make the case (emphasis mine):

              Yet Krugman sometimes falls into the opposite trap: he plays down the deep structural barriers that advocates of reform face. Krugman keeps returning to the notion that President Obama did not aim high enough or try hard enough. The economic stimulus was too small; the president too deferential to Wall Street; the White House too slow to recognize the need for additional action and too timid in demanding that action once it did. These complaints certainly have some basis, but they seriously understate the hurdles the president had to surmount.

              From the day he entered office, the president was engaged in fierce organized combat with well-financed defenders of the status quo and a monolithically opposed Republican Party. To get the Affordable Care Act through Congress, President Obama not only had to court recalcitrant Democratic moderates (after it became clear that the few Republican moderates would be of no help). He also had to buy off the major industry interests, whether insurance companies, hospitals, or the pharmaceutical industry, which meant, above all, forgoing more direct and effective measures to control costs.

              This theory that force of will alone should be enough for the executive to overcome any particular policy resistance has been called the “Green Lantern theory”. It’s usually brought up in terms of foreign policy, but a rule it doesn’t work domestically.

              The Green Lantern theory typically fails because the U.S. system of government is set up so that there’s very little the president can do absent congressional cooperation.

              The structural impediments in the legislature are real and have an actual effect for the implementation (or non-implementation) of policy.

              • He felt that the President might have been able to make the case, say for a larger stimulus bill, had he campaigned for it more directly, but Krugman also expressed uncertainty about that, aware that he is no politician. Obama’s political mistake — according to Krugman — was claiming that the stimulus was just the right size. I think his team thought that claiming legislative victories whenever possible was the right strategy. Unfortunately that decision boxed them in in the 2010 elections and it hasn’t helped in 2012.

                And maybe the Obama political team got it right.

                Running against Republican obstructionism is politically difficult because it requires a more subtle understanding of our government than U.S. voters can be counted on to have. The reason, for example, johnd’s complaints about “whining” and “excuses” are so annoying is that they are actually convincing to voters who don’t understand what you point out above, Mr Lynne. (Similarly by the way, the price of gasoline.)

                There’s also a bit of IOKIYAR operating. When Bush was President and the Republicans held the Senate, there was a whole lot more talk about Democratic obstructionism in the Press than we tend to hear even now about Republican obstructionism. Just think about the prominence of stalled judicial appointments.

                *

                In fairness to your comment, there was a fair bit of Green Lantern coming from other, less professorial parts of the left.

  4. Simpson-Bowles ultimately slashes the average Social Security benefit by 22%

    It will cause many millions of seniors to become impoverished. This is sick. Very, very sick.

    And totally unnecessary – the dire pronouncements by Pete Peterson, Timmy Geithner and company claiming Social Security will be unable to pay all obligations in 25 years are based on assuming that our economy will get worse, and permanently stay worse than it is today. If economy moving forward is anywhere near what it’s been for the last 80 years or so, then Social Security is 100% funded.

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