Your Thoughts On How Sequester Plays Out?

[kairos12]

I am not optimistic President Obama will get any additional revenues.

Right now the Rethugs have their way with 100 percent cuts. I don't see them trading that for any measure that adds taxes.

For me, the sequester was another example of you can't negotiate with crazy.

Your thoughts?

[Marr]

1. Obama will get his beloved chained CPI, and I expect, some Medicare cuts as well.

That's what this is really all about-- the rest is just stage dressing. The 1% who owns most of the country and both party establishments have decided you're not poor enough yet, and their stooges in DC are building political cover to do the job they were paid to do.

[forestpath]

3. Bingo.

[kairos12]

9. Speaking of Medicare Cuts

Did you read Brill's piece in Time magazine on health care. What as fascinating was the only agency bending the cost curve of Health care is medicare--and they want to cut back on that and throw more people in the streets or on the for profit health industry. Madness, but it works for the one percenters.

[JDPriestly]

14. Precisely. The chained CPI cuts are aimed at

those seniors who actually saved a little money. Those who saved a lot will have investment advice that will prevent them from having to spend their last dime before they die. But those who saved just a little, just enough to fail a means test for poverty, will be forced to spend those last pennies they sacrificed to save for their old age.

That's how greedy Wall Street is. Pete Peterson in the lead no doubt.

[Fat Bastard]

17. Chained CPIs will NEVER happen.

If Democrats wants to implode, then implement Chained CPI.

In other words, keep hands off Medicare, SS and Medicaid.

Focus on the god-damn DoD. That's where the majority of the cuts is NEEDED to be made. Cut it down to 5% of the entire budget, and we'd still be #1 in defense.

[Skink]

2. Obama to continue to negotiate with crazy

uhn

[kairos12]

10. That's a problem

[uppityperson]

5. You are not in an union because you need to save money for retirement? And about that squirrel, $325

$325,000 is pennies in the budget to learn about rattlesnakes.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/02/28/robot_squirrel_research_conservatives_hate_scientific_research.html

In this particular case what's happening is that the National Science Foundation is supporting Dr. Rulan Clark's research into the behavior of rattlesnakes. It seems that we actually don't know very much about rattlesnake behavior in general. The robotic squirrels are to help understand a particular aspect of predator-prey interaction in which the snake tries to kill the squirrel, and the squirrel tries to avoid getting killed.

How about cutting the duplicate/overlapping stuff in the military? Do you agree with that? How about cutting military spending overall, and decreasing what our military is currently involved in?

Back to that union thing. You want yours and to hell with anyone else?

[kairos12]

7. Thanks for the reply to that blocked post...

I was about to respond to that Post when it got taken down. I grow tired of Faux News talking points.

[uppityperson]

11. I'll never know how they feel about military cuts now. So sad.

[PETRUS]

12. I saw that post before it went away.

It was full of crap, but I'm only going to pick on one logical error because it's so common and insidious:

The poster wrote some nonsense about Federal borrowing leaving our children and grandchildren in debt, overlooking the obvious point that some future children and grandchildren will be collecting the payments - probably the heirs of people like Bill Gates, David Koch, and Pete Peterson. The real problem isn't the spending, it's unequal wealth distribution and the way the spending is financed.

[uppityperson]

13. That is a very good point. Thank you. Unequal wealth distribution but...oh no... you mean....

socialism!!!!!! omg omg om gomg omg omgomg g!!!!!!!!!!!!111111111111111111

[Igel]

6. There have been lots of proposals made over the last 2 years by both sides.

They've shifted and danced a lot.

At one point, closing loopholes was a (R) proposal. The response was a demand for higher tax rates. This was mostly an ideological battle: (R) tend to believe that lower tax rates, not revenues, provide a basis for economic growth; (D) have made the distinction less often. In the Obama stimulus you got lower revenue through deductions and credits but the tax rates stayed the same. (R) saw no stimulus in those revenue reductions; (D) figured they'd falsified the (R) arguments. For (R) to close loopholes was an easy jump; for (R) to raise taxes would contradict a tenet many hold central.

Now the (D) proposal, or at least one proposal, is to close loopholes. (R) see that as a tactical and possibly strategic loss and an insult. They also figure it's a prelude to a return to demanding tax rate increases. Again.

Parity was proposed at one point. For every dollar of cuts, a dollar of revenues. It was met with a demand for "balance," which meant far more revenue than cuts.

The sequester was originally a politically useful device. It "allowed" by fiat a budget with under $1 trillion deficit. It bundled the tax extensions/reversion of tax cuts with spending cuts. But Obama sequestered the sequester, so to speak, and severed it from tax cuts or de facto increases. It was a political plum but put the plum pit by itself as a separate menu item. Now we're served the pit.

Obama's still winning, in a sense, because the de facto tax increase from 1/2013 isn't seen as connected to the sequester. From the (R) viewpoint, however, there's the HCRA tax increase, the FICA recission, the increased taxes paid by households making over $450,000 plus the loss of deductions by households making over $250k, and the only cuts, so far, for hundreds of billions of dollars of increased tax revenues, is $85 billion.

How's it going to play out? Badly. They may put the ball partly in Obama's court by granting him permission to reallocate funds. I expect (D) to block this amelioration of a bad situation because the worse the situation is--assuming they're spared any taint or blame--the better when it comes to blaming (R). They're politicians, first and foremost.

[kairos12]

8. I agree

This will play out badly because, as you say, they're politicians first. Baring a complete national disaster, which I don't want, which is pinned on some sequester cut (security breakdown at the airport) I see the cuts remaining for the year.

[JDPriestly]

15. Problem is that, looking at this dispute from the

side of the private as opposed to public, government economy, the rich are getting much, much, much richer while the poor and middle classes are getting poor and much, much, much poorer.

It was the poor and middle classes that lost their homes, their jobs, their incomes and then had to take less pay in new jobs when the wash was hung out on the line.

That is why taxes need to be raised on the rich. There is no alternative. The poor and middle classes suffered their share, more than their share of the pain of the bank failures and bail-outs in the private sector and job market.

Occupy analyzed it accurately: Banks got bailed out; we got sold out.

Considering the points of view of the Democrats and Republicans on the budget dispute coldly and without regard for the real, Main Street economy is overly simplistic. It leads to a cruel, draconian result: cuts "equal" to or greater than revenues.

In fact, if we are to save capitalism at this point, we have to renew people's faith that the system can work for the benefit of all. Right now, it's hard to believe that.

Through adjustments to our tax code, we can restore confidence in capitalism. We don't notice the lack of confidence yet, but unless ordinary working people start feeling some prosperity for themselves and their children, we will see growing doubts in the fairness of our system.

What Elizabeth Warren pointed out recently in the hearings about banking regulation is true. Some poor sucker from the slums gets a long prison sentence for dealing drugs.

A big bank launders millions in drug money and gets to pay a relatively small fine and walks away with its CEO, board of directors and reputation unscathed. The children of the drug dealer go hungry. The children of the bankers go to Harvard.

[99Forever]

16. It will prodeed exactly as the Corporate Owners of...

... our government have decreed. Short of a revolution, nothing will happen to stop this Nation from the coming shitstorm. Austerity will be crammed down our throats as the ruling elite throw parties and feasts for the 1% in their Washington DC bubble.

[talkingmime]

18. November 2014 is going to be sweet.