My assessment of the sequester

[Sonikku]

It's everyones fault. The politicians work for the doners because who has the bigger war chest is the biggest factor in winning election. If Americans didn't so easily allow themselves to have their vote manipulated by an obviously biased attack ad so much than it would lessen the over reliance on big campaign doners to get elected. Although allowing 90% of the media to be controlled by just 6 corporations doesn't help matters.

 

[EagleKeeper]

The administration was elected to lead this country;
Avoiding sequestration would be one way of doing so.

With a divided congress; the administration can easily carve 5-10% out of the defense.
Stand up and carve 5% out of the social programs; enough waste has been identifies that they can do it if they want to.
There are no IOUs to write; he has already been re-elected.

Congress can direct where the $$ are to be spent; however, it is p tot he admin to actually spend them.

Using the tank example;
Congress may have authorized the funding to build the tanks; however, if the Army feels they are not needed; the admin does not have to buy them. Yes, it will get some noses bent out of shape; but at this point, the political risk is negligible. the admin only issue would be they may need votes from Congress on something and those that were represented by the tanks will not support him.

boo hoo.

His job is the welfare of the whole country; not a specific district. That belongs to the House. If is was a Repub district, they will be against him as a matter of fact at this point anyhow oiut of sheer meanness/principle.
If a Democrat district; the power shift has already happened; the Dems do not have the influnce in the House to punish Obama.

 

[Craig234]

These weapons programs often have 50 or close to 50 states and even more congressional districtc making them - for a reason.

Many Democrats are 'forced' to support them as well as constituents are not very fond of cost cutting that affects their area.

The above post has a whole lot of excessive 'blame Obama', though Obama is no saint in all this. Saying 'he's elected to lead' needs to recognize issues like filibuster abuse.

 

[EagleKeeper]

These weapons programs often have 50 or close to 50 states and even more congressional districtc making them - for a reason.

Many Democrats are 'forced' to support them as well as constituents are not very fond of cost cutting that affects their area.

The above post has a whole lot of excessive 'blame Obama', though Obama is no saint in all this. Saying 'he's elected to lead' needs to recognize issues like filibuster abuse.

Obama can do things that do not need filibuster approval.

Congress has given him the checks made out to each program.
He does not need to cash the check.

Obama is still trying to run the administration as if he needs to please both sides of the aisle.
He does not; he needs to lead the country out of the current mess by showing leadership instead of statesmanship.
He is acting as if he does not know what to do and is gropping around in the dark for a magic wand or a seeing eye dog.

LEAD, Follow or get the heck out of the way.

He is unable to do any of those three

 

[Codewiz]

I agree with you that's where the money goes, but not that 'cutting civilians does nothing'.

The big defense companies are the heart of the corrupt interests, and cutting the spending on them is exactly what's needed.

What does this have to do with gov't civilians? You are talking about defense companies that I mention......

It both frees up the people for more productive things and cuts wasteful spending, while reducing the single most powerful 'special interest' wasting our tax money.

Don't disagree but we need gov't civilians. And we need to keep talented ones. The DoD, NASA, and every other gov't agency created great things when the gov't paid well AND invested in their actual employees. The gov't used to recruit the top of the fields. People with PhDs and masters degrees. Now the gov't doesn't pay enough to retain a lot of talent.

Unfortunately, it's always the case that there's a risk that cuts to big bloated 'special interests' cut first from the 'good' programs instead of the bad. If they have to pick between the tax dollar going to a good program or into their pocket, into their pocket sounds just fine. But I'd still rather see the cuts - I think that usually improves. Not doing it leaves the terrible waste in place.

Again, we need to reassess what is import. Who is our potential enemy. I think if you look at that and examined it, you would realize we need all of our current civilian staffing levels IF not more. What we don't need are all the special interests as you mention.

Vague phrases like 'we need to retain talented civilians for a strong DoD' are a problem - they're used to justify waste. Does that mean 1 million such civilians? or 750k? or 3 million?

Well we don't have 1 million or 3 million. The DoD civilian force is large but I would argue is woefully understaffed if we were to reinvest into what we need. Reinvesting in our workforce AND looking at what our defense needs would still result in MASSIVE cuts. Again, we don't need more planes and aircraft carriers. We don't need to keep dumping money into private companies that result in vendor lock in.

If you want to get an idea what I am talking about. Go look at the maintenance costs of the CHCS health care system for the DoD. The DoD is paying HUGE amounts of money to SAIC. Every change they want, means millions to SAIC. Now you might ask why......because the DoD outsourced knowledge. Instead of investing in their own people, they just outsourced it to SAIC. Now the DoD is beholden to SAIC and whatever they charge.

BTW, CHCS is a fork of the VA VistA system. The VA maintained their talent in house so they manage it all themselves. They can do updates and push out new features for very little cost. Now the DoD is trying to figure out how to get out from under ALHTA and CHCS. It is ugly and costs a lot of money. All because the DoD outsourced knowledge.

Doesn't matter - the argument applies equally without limit. Any cut means 'not having a strong DoD', which is not necessarily correct.

Nope, I am saying that we need to examine who we are likely to fight. We aren't going to be facing any large wars in the near future.

This is how we get into the problem with the DoD, when some people think that ANY CUT to the military budget means 'oh my gosh weak defense we're gonna get conquered!'

I disagree, but the way the cut is currently being implemented is that all the BIG DoD contractors aren't feeling anything. All their programs and employees continue on. The people getting hit are the actual gov't civilian employees.

Corruption is usually attached to some legitimate 'good cause' or legitimate need, exactly for that reason, that it gets questioned less. The mafia could run a garbage company and charge high prices because who knew how much is too much and garbage collection isn't a service you can eliminate. It's a lot easier to hide waste in bloat for an important area of spending than in something suspicious. The only amazing thing is that the Pentagon objects to any programs, given all the inventives they have to support the excesses.

My problem is that this sequestration isn't hitting the people you think.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

Obama can do things that do not need filibuster approval.

Such as?

I don't understand why Obama gets so much of the blame for spending issues, which are the purview of Congress.

 

[Brainonska511]

Congress has given him the checks made out to each program. He does not need to cash the check.

It seems that the president has little power in the ability to not spend money Congress allots by law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impoundment_of_appropriated_funds

Impoundment is the decision of a President of the United States not to spend money that has been appropriated by the U.S. Congress. The precedent for presidential impoundment was first set by Thomas Jefferson in 1801. The power was available to all presidents up to and including Richard Nixon, and was regarded as a power inherent to the office. The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 was passed in response to perceived abuse of the power under President Nixon. Title X of the act, and its interpretation under Train v. City of New York, essentially removed the power. This severely inhibited a president's ability to reject congressionally-approved spending

 

[Fern]

These weapons programs often have 50 or close to 50 states and even more congressional districtc making them - for a reason.

Many Democrats are 'forced' to support them as well as constituents are not very fond of cost cutting that affects their area.

The above post has a whole lot of excessive 'blame Obama', though Obama is no saint in all this. Saying 'he's elected to lead' needs to recognize issues like filibuster abuse.

There is no filibustering budgetary/finance bills.

I'm pretty sure you know that.

Fern

 

[ivwshane]

There is no filibustering budgetary/finance bills.

I'm pretty sure you know that.

Fern

And it's not the presidents job to set the budget either

 

[cwjerome]

And it's not the presidents job to set the budget either

The president doesn't pass bills allocating funds, but the executive is very involved in the budget process.

 

[irishScott]

Well yeah. Two duplicitous, amoral, mortal enemies made a mutual suicide pact; and now that the time has come both are maneuvering to ensure that the other one dies first.

 

[FerrelGeek]

The president doesn't pass bills allocating funds, but the executive is very involved in the budget process.

This. Passed presidents have submitted budgets to congress. It's the Executive branch's way of outlining it's proposed wants / needs for the coming fiscal year. Congress can use that or reject that as it wishes. The House is supposed to draft and and approve a budget then send it to the Senate for approval. If the Senate makes changes, the two houses haggle over the differences and work out the final budget. Once passed by Congress, it goes to the President for signature. The President then has the authority to approve of veto the budget. Once the budget is approved, it is the Executive branch's responsibility to run the government based on the funds allocated. Some funds are discretionary, some are not. The Executive branch does have some authority to not spend certain money and has the authority to transfer some funds from one area to another. So, the Executive branch is far from helpless.

The above process has been broken for years. The Obama admin hasn't sent a budget to congress cuz Obama doesn't want his name attached to anything; that's been his behavior since he was an IL Senator. The House has proposed budgets and sent them to the Senate, but the Senate hasn't done anything with those proposed budgets. Agree or disagree with the proposed house budgets all you want, but the House HAS proposed budgets.

What we've been left with for years is stop-gap spending bill after stop-gap spending bill.

Obama wanted the sequester. Now it's politically expedient for him to rail against it and blame 'the stupid party'. Let the sequestration happen. When the world doesn't end maybe some people will wake up and realize that we have a spending problem.

 

[Craig234]

The president doesn't pass bills allocating funds, but the executive is very involved in the budget process.

This comes up a lot, so let's clear it up.

The executive branch creates a suggested budget and submits it to the House.

The House chooses to use it as a 'starting point'. The executive has a lot of expertise on where the money is needed, given they actually run the agencies.

The White House puts its priorities into its budget. The House adjusts them to its.

When the House passes its version, they have to keep in mind that they need the Senate to pass it also, and either the President to sign it or to have votes to override a veto.

Typically I'd think it goes to a conference committee so the House and Senate can resolve their differences - they have to pass the identical budget.

The White House carries a lot of weight - which is a political fact more than a formal, constitutional role. However, the House can completely reject their budget if they want.

Something else I had clarified recently - there are two types of bills relevant here. What many politicians call 'the budget' are budget bills that lay out bigger picture priorities.

The second type is 'appropriations bills' authorizing the specific spending. The 'budget bills' are more political; the appropriations bills the nuts and bolts.

We've been hearing a lot from Republicans that 'the Senate hasn't passed a budget in years', but according to the staffers I spoke with, that's referring to the first type of bill and appropriations bills have been passed, so it's pretty misleading. Also, Jan 2012 had a 10-year 'budget bill' passed - which is a bit meaningless considering it's not binding on anyone after the current Congress.

 

[Craig234]

The above process has been broken for years. The Obama admin hasn't sent a budget to congress cuz Obama doesn't want his name attached to anything; that's been his behavior since he was an IL Senator. The House has proposed budgets and sent them to the Senate, but the Senate hasn't done anything with those proposed budgets. Agree or disagree with the proposed house budgets all you want, but the House HAS proposed budgets.

What we've been left with for years is stop-gap spending bill after stop-gap spending bill.

Obama wanted the sequester. Now it's politically expedient for him to rail against it and blame 'the stupid party'. Let the sequestration happen. When the world doesn't end maybe some people will wake up and realize that we have a spending problem.

On the one hand, I can't get a good answer from Democratic Senators why the Senate hasn't passed a budget bill. On the other, IMO it's likely Republicans would obstruct one.

I'm not sure as a practical matter how damaging it is one hasn't been passed every year - though some sort of 10-year version did pass a year ago - given appropriations are passed.

I have a question into a staffer to check how many years Obama has submitted a budget.

My recollection is that Obama wanted the sequester no more than Republicans. The entire issue was driven by and only by the Republicans' refusal to raise the debt ceiling.

That was an irresponsible abuse of their power to try to blackmail.

As it worked out, 174 Republicans voted for the sequester and John Boehner said he was happy with the result getting "98% of what he wanted".

So it's the Republicans who are now distorting, trying to have talking points that everyone refers to it as 'the President's sequester' to play a blame game.

People on the right tend not to understand the issue of spending - they have a very simplistic, arithmetic approach to budgeting - 'we need a balanced budget!'

No, we don't. The debt we do have is way too high - thanks to Republicans, the Presidents who have shot it up are Reagan and George W. Bush - Clinton got rid of the deficit and nearly all the debt increase under Obama is from continuing Bush programs from the borrowed tax cuts to the off-budget wars - but the time to end it is not mid-recovery from the biggest recession in 75 years, except some areas that won't hurt the recovery too much.

Obama has governed like a moderate Republican - he's had more middle class tax cuts than in a long time, the government workforce has shrunk, and so on.

Thing is, much government spending stimulates the economy; some more than pays for itself.

Something most Republicans miss is that if you cut spending by an amount, but that causes the economy to shrink a good amount, you haven't done anything for the deficit. To these Republicans, every dollar not spent by the government has no cost by not being spent - it's simply saved. That is wrong, treating all government spending like it was just burning money.

That's why these countries who have adopted the same policies Republicans advocate - austerity - are seeing the economies shrink and make things worse than before.

Fact is, the fiscal system for the US which prints its own money and is the word's reserve currency are quite different than the fiscal issues for a citizen balancing a checkbook.

Mencken said every problem has a solution that is simple, neat and wrong. These Republican mantras about using checkbooks as a model are simple, neat and wrong.

 

[FerrelGeek]

As I said, we're not CUTTING spending. We're only REDUCING the INCREASE. And Obama did support the sequester back in Nov/2011.

 

[Codewiz]

As I said, we're not CUTTING spending. We're only REDUCING the INCREASE. And Obama did support the sequester back in Nov/2011.

Saying that Obama supported the sequester back in 2011 is dishonest in my opinion. I am not an Obama supporter but I will call a spade a spade. Obama supported the senate and house putting together a plan (including the sequester) so that they would be forced to work together.

Unfortunately, now people are saying that he supported the sequester when that isn't the case. He wanted congress to function and get things done. If that meant passing something so bad that it forced people to work together, he went with it. People did not think congress would be this dysfunctional. He never wanted to cut any programs in this haphazard way.

 

[Fern]

Saying that Obama supported the sequester back in 2011 is dishonest in my opinion. I am not an Obama supporter but I will call a spade a spade. Obama supported the senate and house putting together a plan (including the sequester) so that they would be forced to work together.

Unfortunately, now people are saying that he supported the sequester when that isn't the case. He wanted congress to function and get things done. If that meant passing something so bad that it forced people to work together, he went with it. People did not think congress would be this dysfunctional. He never wanted to cut any programs in this haphazard way.

Bob Woodward, the famous Washington reporter, disagrees with you.

He researched and published a book not too long ago. In it, he claims Reid and Bohner reached an agreement/compromise to avoid the whole thing, but that Obama objected. Woodward also claimed that the sequestration was authored/proposed by the Obama Administration itself. (When during the Presidential debates Obama claimed that sequestration was authored/proposed by Congress, and NOT his Admin, Woodward went out on TV and elsewhere saying Obama was wrong.)

I posted a link previously to this - IIRC a rather lengthy column written by Woodward himself. I googled quickly but there's simply too much in the news about this subject for me to find it again quickly. The title of Woodward's book is The Price of Politics.

Fern

 

[Codewiz]

Bob Woodward, the famous Washington reporter, disagrees with you.

He researched and published a book not too long ago. In it, he claims Reid and Bohner reached an agreement/compromise to avoid the whole thing, but that Obama objected. Woodward also claimed that the sequestration was authored/proposed by the Obama Administration itself. (When during the Presidential debates Obama claimed that sequestration was authored/proposed by Congress, and NOT his Admin, Woodward went out on TV and elsewhere saying Obama was wrong.)

I posted a link previously to this - IIRC a rather lengthy column written by Woodward himself. I googled quickly but there's simply too much in the news about this subject for me to find it again quickly. The title of Woodward's book is The Price of Politics.

Fern

I would be happy to read articles on it, but one source doesn't convince me. I am also not going to buy a book for his commentary.

I don't see many sources conservatives or not claiming this came from Obama outside of just saying he signed the bill so he supported it.

 

[Craig234]

Something that needs to be said in the discussion is that while the sequester has some horrible cuts, I've seen charts suggesting that while the first year would have problems, putting us back in recession, in the years after there would actually be benefits and a great benefit to deficit reduction. It looks a lot better.

This is a reason I leaned towards letting it happen at the end of last year - especially if we could have had other better policies such as at least returning the tax rates on the wealthy. Of course, as always Obama threw away the more progressive position quickly and limited that to incomes over $400,000 and made the other tax rates lowered with borrowed money permanent and got nothing else in return.

It's absurdly difficult to do anything about the greatly excessive military budget, and this is a very rare chance.

I'm sympathetic to arguments from a poster here about those cuts being poorly assigned to needed DoD civilians, but I can't help but think there will be good effects also.

 

[Craig234]

So if Obama said 'let's have Medicare for everyone' (sadly, he won't), and Republicans agreed and voted for it and after the vote Boehner said how he 'got 98% of what he wanted' and was very happy with the policy, then it would be correct for Republicans to attack Obama for the policy and say it was 'Obama's Medicare expansion' and act like they'd opposed it all along? Revisionist history for the dishonest.

I repeat, sequester would not have been passed except for Republicans' refusal to pay our bills.

That demanded some 'compromise' be put in place, which was the debt reduction commission/sequester, with both sides saying they didn't want the sequester to happen.

 

[fskimospy]

Bob Woodward, the famous Washington reporter, disagrees with you.

He researched and published a book not too long ago. In it, he claims Reid and Bohner reached an agreement/compromise to avoid the whole thing, but that Obama objected. Woodward also claimed that the sequestration was authored/proposed by the Obama Administration itself. (When during the Presidential debates Obama claimed that sequestration was authored/proposed by Congress, and NOT his Admin, Woodward went out on TV and elsewhere saying Obama was wrong.)

I posted a link previously to this - IIRC a rather lengthy column written by Woodward himself. I googled quickly but there's simply too much in the news about this subject for me to find it again quickly. The title of Woodward's book is The Price of Politics.

Fern

It's true that Obama proposed the sequester, but who cares? It came in response to the Republicans holding the world economy hostage. If the Republicans had not decided to try and play chicken with the debt ceiling the sequester never would have existed to begin with. It seems odd to try and hang the blame for a policy on someone when they proposed it in response to your demands. What's also funny about this is at the time it happened the Republicans (Boehner included) touted it as an achievement they were proud of and are now in the incoherent position of saying that the spending cuts are both necessary and disastrous. Finally, let's be honest with ourselves from a political standpoint, when it comes to spending cuts people are simply not going to buy the idea that Republicans really wanted to keep spending more money but mean old Obama wouldn't let them.

No matter what, I'm relatively happy with the state of the discussion. With the sequester you have the implicit acceptance from both parties that Keynesian economics was right all along, which is a really important point going forward.

 

[Craig234]

Not only did Republicans vote for the sequester - Boehner was out giving a powerpoint at the time that has been found advocating for it.

 

[Craig234]

No matter what, I'm relatively happy with the state of the discussion. With the sequester you have the implicit acceptance from both parties that Keynesian economics was right all along, which is a really important point going forward.

You don't have that much honesty from the Republicans. I haven't seen one say it. They only say it would 'destroy the Pentagon' and that's why they oppose it.

 

[Codewiz]

It's absurdly difficult to do anything about the greatly excessive military budget, and this is a very rare chance.

I'm sympathetic to arguments from a poster here about those cuts being poorly assigned to needed DoD civilians, but I can't help but think there will be good effects also.

But you aren't getting the cuts you want. If you truly want to cut waste, you don't do it by causing a 20% paycut for gov't civilians. Again, they aren't really cutting anything else.

Here is what they are doing. They are pulling back on patrols. They are cutting corners where ever possible. But by my math, they are getting ~1/3 of the cost savings off the backs of gov't employees. They will just reduce whatever the can without actually pulling any money off of any of the DoD programs in general.

So all the waste, fraud, and/or abuse can continue. The massive DoD contractors will still be racking in the money and lining the pockets of the GOP. It does not do what you want.

 

[Fern]

I would be happy to read articles on it, but one source doesn't convince me. I am also not going to buy a book for his commentary.

I don't see many sources conservatives or not claiming this came from Obama outside of just saying he signed the bill so he supported it.

No, I don't recommend you buy the book (or that you don't). I included it's name to help you search if you were so inclined.

A google search like this should turn up a number of sources, articles on different sites. http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sugexp...eWU&fp=46c83184b0067790&biw=1024&bih=614&bs=1

Like this one, which is fairly detailed in describing the events, the persons etc involved in bringing about sequestration:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...651dc6a-1eed-11e2-ba31-3083ca97c314_blog.html

If by "one source" you mean Woodward, I don't have much to say other than you may not find much more, if any at all. As has been noted often, journalism is in a sad state of decline and the Admin is not really talking to the few serious reporters that still exist. Woodward was given rare and extensive access to the White house. I cannot think of anyone else who has gotton that, so he may be 'it'.

Fern