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How the U.S. Sequester Will Hurt Science and Tech
Later today, the U.S. government will enter the sequestration process, a series of across-the-board budget cuts put into place automatically because U.S. politicians are bad at agreeing on things. "At that moment, somewhere in the bowels of the Treasury Department, officials will take offline the computers that process payments for school construction and clean energy bonds to reprogram them for reduced rates. Payments will be delayed while they are made manually for the next six weeks." The cuts will directly affect science- and tech-related spending throughout the country. Tom Levenson writes, '[s]equester cuts will strike bluntly across the scientific community. The illustrious can move a bit of money around, but even in large labs, a predictable result will be a reduction in the number of graduate student and post – doc slots available — and as those junior and early-stage researchers do a whole lot of the at-the-bench level research, such cuts will have an immediate effect on research productivity. The longer term risk is obvious too: fewer students and post-docs mean on an ongoing drop from baseline in the amount of work to be done year over year.' The former director of the National Institute of Health says it will set back medical science for a generation. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has laid out how the cuts will affect the U.S. space program. He said, "The Congress wasn’t able to do what they were supposed to do, so we’re going to suffer." The sequester will also prevent billions of dollars from flowing into the tech industry. This comes at a time when there's a pressing need in the tech sector for professionals versed in the use of Linux, and salaries for those workers are on the rise.
Your payroll tax increased 2% on Jan 1, if you work. That is a 2% paycut to you, period.
The sequestor is effectively a 1% reduction in spending this year for the Federal government.
Translation: You need to do with less and not complain, if you force the government to reduce spending by a tiny amount doom will come for you.
Wait! You don't think.... No! Surely politicians wouldn't play games with government services for political gain? Say it isn't so!
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
I see Sequestration as a good thing. Think of all dead wood that is being eliminated because of it. Of course there are going to be some casualties. But I am sure the shinning stars have read the book "who moved my cheese" and are looking for a better job.
Hate to say it, but the House Republicans take the majority of the blame for this one. Some on the Right see crippling the government as a good thing.
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
the federal government will spend $14,000,000,000 more this year than last, even with these "cuts."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Where is the quadrillion dollar platinum coin? We need it now!
New Economic Perspectives
As we have seen numerous times in the past, one way to reduce change (especially with the public) is to increase the pain of change. Save a dollar? Better unplug the preme from the ICU for 20 minutes to save power instead of cutting back on the free lunch for the doctors.
Seen before and expected, but lets all start screaming.
Can we please just cut these idiots' pay every time they stop doing their jobs like this?
I bet all of our problems would be fixed really quick!
A less than 3% cut in funding is going to set medical science back a generation? By that logic, if we were to increase funding by 3% (as we have more than done) we should have seen a generation's worth of progress. So where are my medical tricorders?
Methinks somebody is fearmongering. I'll be the first to say cutting research funding is a dumb idea, but is it too much to ask that the former head of the NIH assess the situation based on the facts and not Chicken Little "the sky is falling" theater?
Colin Macilwain. Science should be ready to jump off ‘the cliff’. Nature 491, 639 (29 November 2012) doi:10.1038/491639a
These aren't real scientists asking that government money stick around, but lobbyists for companies that feed upon science funding. Scientists love more government money of course, but many scientists understand that far must be cut, especially in military spending.
Sequestration merely provides an opportunity to re-evaluate what is important. Our question should be : Do we decide "important" by consulting lobbyists or by looking at the work that gets done.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Not one person in the 3 branches of government made any mention of making sacrifices and them getting pay cuts?
It was "the government shutdown" a few years ago. And all sorts of people got on their soap box and blamed everyone else for it. Now it's called something else, the "sequester". And again let's point fingers and blame. However none of that has to do with the real problem - the US is spending more money than it takes in, spending more money than it can print, even, and has been doing this for YEARS. They scream at the federal banks to keep interest rates near zero to "stimulate the economy" meaning that everyone must bear the cost of the devaluation including those smart enough to put their money to work, and then they wonder why all the wealth is leaving the US dollar.
The US will be buried under its Keynesian nightmare. I just hope it doesn't take the whole world with it.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
> because U.S. politicians are bad at agreeing on things.
If you think the budget problems (and resulting cuts) are only due to disagreement, you're an idiot.
Tammy Duckworth to take 8.4 percent pay cut if sequester happens
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/02/27/tammy-duckworth-to-take-8-4-percent-pay-cut-if-sequester-happens/
Not being American myself and living in Europe, this is some much needed good news for us. We have not cut scientific or R&D nearly as much as the US which in to medium to long term will give us a competitive advantage. The only problem is that China is still ramping up its R&D budgets. The decline of the US is old news.
They should really call it what it is, "austerity". Then maybe the idea of it will be more obvious when compared to similar measures around the world. Really, this is the USA, we can do better.
Sweet, some links to a blog and an opinion piece. Thanks for your valuable contribution.
If there's one thing politicians are EXPERTS at, it's convincing the general public that money must keep flowing in for any and all of the projects they voted for, or else dire consequences will result.
To step back and put these cuts into perspective.... Federal govt. is STILL spending something like $13 TRILLION dollars a year in deficit spending with the full effects of the sequester in place!
The primary reason Obama is motivated to scare up people to put a stop to this and "work out a deal" is because this prevents his healthcare reform plans from taking effect. (And before we get into that whole debate on whether or not his healthcare changes would be a good or a bad thing for the USA? Let me just say that IMO, the REAL problem with them is they attempt to fix only one side of the issue, while ignoring the other side. It's great to try to ensure all Americans have healthcare options available to them. But nobody has really tried, yet, to do anything about the massive (and constantly rising) COSTS of healthcare, which SOMEBODY gets the bill for, whether it's an uninsured individual or the insurance company covering that individual by govt. mandate.
Time magazine (the online version) very recently published a great piece on all of this, breaking down line-by-line, all the costs on 6 or 7 people's hospital bills, and clearly illustrating how inflated and arbitrary those charges are. (By and large, the price Medicare/Medicaid actually compensates a hospital for a given procedure or good is pretty darn close to what a "fair" price would really be, where a small but reasonable profit is made - but no gouging takes place. But so far, Obama's healthcare reform doesn't really do anything to ensure ALL insurance companies are able to pay those bills using those same rate structures. So each of those $29 -rays becomes $300 charges, etc.)
But overall? As little effort has been made to spend our tax dollars more wisely? (Some recently approved study was going to give over $1 million to researchers for a project studying goldfish to see what they could learn about political choices people make based some some aspect of their habits!) I wouldn't mind seeing govt. grinding to a halt for a while .... even if it causes a little inconvenience and pain in the short-run.
Cut it all - Starting with congresscritter pensions and benefits (don't get distracted by their salaries, just a drop in the bucket compared to their real cost).
The problem with this whole sequester (aside from not going nearly far enough) comes from the whitehouse thinking themselves clever for having made an uncallable bluff - From assuming that the Republicans would never let the military suffer any real cuts. Well, whaddya know, in a surprising show of sanity, the larger principle of getting government spending under control trumped even their favorite special interest.
Yeah, we (by which I mean fiscal conservatives, not to imply I would ever voluntarily associate myself with the GOP) would all rather see the real problems addressed - End social security, end security theater, and cut HHS and the DOD in half (at least). But this current farce? Hey, better than nothing, but at least it counts as a start.
Cut. It. All!
+5 INSIGHTFUL
Really, how long are we going to swallow absolute FUD without question?
The sequester is $1.2 trillion....OVER TEN YEARS. So $120 bill a year (I've seen it reported as $85 bill for this year).
The idea - as promulgated by the spenders in Congress and White House - is that ANY cut in spending by the US gov't will radically and catastrophically affect (whatever service is important to the listener). This is a bald-faced lie.
This morning, a senior administration official claimed that sequestration would CANCEL all military service person training for the rest of the year (outside of actually-deployed servicepeople). Seriously? A 5% cut in budget cancels 75% of a training schedule?
One example: Obama/Tiger Golf Trip cost $989,207 to the Fed and $78,205 to local police...the average american household paid $1372 in income tax... So ~728 American households had to pay taxes for an entire year to fund the golf trip...
And yet we're crying that we can't cut anything from the US budget? Really?
My understanding - I'm not an economist - is that if we simply STOPPED programmed-increases in spending for 6 years, the US budget would be balanced. That doesn't seem that painful, given that most American businesses (except Wall Street, I suppose) have suffered far worse over the past 5 years already.
On NPR this morning, they discussed the previous sequestration of 2% that happened in 1991. The bureaucrat they talked to discussed "how hard it was to implement this 2% cut in everything", using as an example a call he got from a Parks person, asking how they implement a 2% cut in service that scrapes bird shit off of channel buoys. His response was to "...only scrape 98% of the crap off".
This, my friends, is what passes for both intelligent thought in government bureaucrats...either he (most likely) thought that was an ironic, humorous reply to what he felt was an unjust budget cutting (which it really wasn't) or he thought that was ACTUALLY a way to reduce his 'poop scraping' service costs by 2%.
As much as they try to make it so, it's pretty simple: expenditure cannot exceed income. Period, full stop. ANY OTHER SOLUTION IS GAME-PLAYING.
Oh, and for those with a party bias? I'll just remind everyone that this has been a problem for 50 years REGARDLESS of which party controlled Congress and the White House. It wouldn't be this bad, if both parties weren't generally colluding.
-Styopa
If the people elected to Congress, Senate and Whitehouse can't pass a frigging budget in 5 frigging years at least we can implement the measures PROPOSED AND APPROVED BY THE PRESIDENT to decrease their out of control spending!
3 cheers!
The Bob Woodward thing was a bit overblown, fyi. Not really as mafia-like as it first seemed once you read the emails. (And I'm on the "Obama administration is fearmongering" side, to put my biases out there)
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
Actually, the sequester doesn't cut federal spending at all, or rather it cuts it only in the Washington sense of any reduction from projected baseline increases is a cut. In reality, even if the sequester goes through, the federal government will spend more every single year.
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/fairy-tale-spending-cuts
Spending will still go up, just not as much.
I care, but only a little. And at this point it's abotu securing myself and my family from any of the negative effects that will come.
I think the whole sequester thing is dumb as hell. Always did.
After playing poltical brinkmanship for years, they finally agree on one thing, and its this idiot piece of legislation.
So I do care. But I have very little sympathy left. Because after passing this absolutely retarded "suicide pact" what did the country do?
THEY RE-ELECTED ALL THE SAME IDIOTS AND SENT THEM RIGHT BACK TO CONGRESS, AGAIN.
So who is more foolish?
The fools in Congress?
Or the fools who re-elected them?
Since day one, I know it would happen like this. As a political gambit both sides knew EXACTLY what they were doing.
They knew from the first that they would absolutely intentionally go right over that cliff.
And they knew right from the start that they would blame the other side for anything negative to come of it.
And they knew that the fools that elected them would believe them when they did so and compeltely ignore any fault on the part of their own political side.
As far as the politicians are concerned, its a win/win no matter what happens.
After all, it's not actually going to affect them inside, only everyone else outside the Capitol building
They'll make damn sure of that.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
During all the Chicken Little propaganda blitz, not a mention in any of the media outlets about the > $100B in wasteful spending that the Government Accountability Office found. Go to WSJ.com and search for the article "Billions in Bloat Uncovered in Beltway". Last week Rand Paul returned $600k in surplus operating budget back to the Treasury, up from $500k he returned last year. I'm sure there are plenty of Congressmen(women) that could do the same. I'm sure they could if more of them actually had respect for our tax dollars. How about slashing Congress' budget?
Or how about cutting down on the hundreds of millions of dollars in conferences that Gov't employees attend every year? Do conferences have to be in Vegas? Can we setup a few of these conferences in Detroit for a change, even if it's not as much fun? That is, if they're so important because of the work being done. Hmmm?
Also no mention of the fact that there is still plenty of discretion as to what each agency gets to cut. Planes won't fall out of the sky if you furlough paper pushers instead of Air Traffic Controllers.
Truth is, not every Federal employee is critical, and they are now starting to average better pay and more $100k+ workers and better benefits than the private sector. The Government shut down numerous times during Reagan's time, and nobody resorted to cannibalism because of it. Civilization is still here; for now. Notice how, up until last week, the message was all about all the different aspect of our lives that were going to break down due to these budget cuts. The President sounded like a prepper! Doesn't this tell us that we are WAAAY too dependent on government?
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
While I'm certain there is some truth that a small decrease in budget means some things might not happen (we're actually more resilient though... so I wouldn't say that "all things stop" like some are trying to say).... what about all the waste? I mean, you scratch your head about how our tax dollars are used to study arguably "stupid" things.... did you ever ask why that is? Do we really want those studies?
If I give a "gift" of government dollars to "you" and you don't really have a plan.. in order to not lose those dollars, you come up with "something"... and presto... the stupid research study is born.... so maybe a reduction is a good idea... maybe we'll think more carefully about where dollars matter... in fact, maybe even better would be a better "attitude" (and associated process) that makes us want to push committed dollars to "real" meaningful projects and studies instead of creating "the stupid" just so we don't throw away the funding.
The government is a machine. Remember how things work and then you can understand why there is so much waste.
If we can't afford stuff... let's decide that we stop spending until we figure out how to spend correctly... While I'm not a fan of President Obama, I'm not against the idea of spending tax dollars on national infrastructure if done wisely (and I believe he's sort of for that... though I'll bet there's an "angle"). But for now, until we figure out how to stop wasting the dollars, I think we just need to put the brakes on in order to force people to "scream". Let's face it, we use the "scream test" in IT all of the time to reduce waste.... it works... though occasionally (rare) the penalty is high.
I guess it should come as no surprise that slash dotters do understand math and know BS when it involves numerical slight of hand. Too bad the press and a lot of politicians can't figure this out.
Think tanks, superpacs, etc funded by the hyper-rich create policy...
By hyper-rich, you mean people like George Soros...Oops, no I guess not, since his money goes to think tanks and super-pacs that create policy for the Democratic Party...and ostracize those Democratic politicians who do not hew sufficiently close to the line on those policies. Or maybe you mean Herb and Marion Sandler, the couple who profited off of the banking practices that led to the financial meltdown and sold their company just before the collapse? Oh no, you must not mean them, they support Democratic Party think tanks and Super PACs as well.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Percentage-wise, we're shaving off about 8%:
By an eerie coincidence, you can lose 8% of your body weight by decapitating yourself:
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
http://blogs.ajc.com/kyle-wingfield/2013/02/25/oh-that-dreaded-awful-sequester/?cxntfid=blogs_kyle_wingfield
See the awful pain in store for us all? Yeah, me neither.
Bunk. Pure bunk. This apocryphal sequester is just about reducing the amount that the administration's spending will increase over last year. Any spending cuts purported to stem from the sequester will be strategically planned to fool the sheeple into believing that confiscation and redistribution is the way to prosperity. Sadly, as certain European nations are now realizing, when you punish society's producers, then sooner or later there will be nobody left to pull the cart.
Ok so here is another idea... See all the illegal immigrants that are in the USA... Give them a work visa, and a way to stay in the USA legally, and tax their earnings... Now, H1B people with spouses on H4... Allow the spouses to work and tax their earnings... That is a potential 60k more people on the H4 visas annually that will be paying tax. Not even sure where to look for figures on illegal immigrants...
Actually, DOJ should be defunded until Eric Holder resigns and the Fast and Furious documents are turned over. This lawless administration only understands force, because that is how they do things.
Bureaucrats have one goal in life. To accumulate more power and increase the size of their budgets. The thoughts of cutting waste and removing inefficiency never occur to their twisted minds.
If these microscopic little slowdowns in their budget increases (these are not cuts) have any effect on government services whatsoever, it is only because the bureaucrats implemented them in a way that would be most painful and most noticeable to the people.
If your spouse was a bureaucrat and you had to decrease household spending by 2.2%, the cut would be made by turning off the heat and electricity. The restaurant and entertainment budget that a sane person would cut first would not be touched. That way, the cuts would be as painful as possible so that you didn't DARE suggest a cut ever again.
It would be possible to cut the federal government by 33% without anyone but the bureaucratic parasites noticing.
While it's true that the "sequestration" is across the board, that's by department. Each government department is a huge enterprise. Surely, a little thought from the top (and from each agency) should have been able to find the least impactful things to cut.
Instead, the President (as the CEO) spent the last two weeks running around threatening the most dire results .... instead of meeting with the people (viz. the senate and house membership and leaders) to coax a settlement.
IANAR, but it is painfully clear who bears the greater responsibility for the outcome. Sadly, it appears far more difficult for the press (oh my, isn't Michelle wonderful at the Academy Awards?) to focus on either things that count, or on whose feet need to be held to which fire.
It is, in fact, a real cut to the currently-appropriated spending and the current spending rate. While it is often the case that reductions in projected increases are sold as "cuts" in government budgets, this is not one of the cases.
The sequester has nothing to do with baseline budgeting, it has to do with cuts to funds that are already appropriated for the current period.
Also, nothing in the federal budget happens automatically. If an appropriation isn't passed for each year, there are no funds, period, full stop. Baseline budgeting has to do with how budget proposals are drafted and presented, it doesn't mean that if no legislative action is taken an appropriation automatically remains in effect indefinitely.
They do and funding isn't automatic under the current system. That's why we have a government shutdown if no appropriation is passed by Congress and signed by the President (or repassed by Congressional supermajority over a Presidential veto.) Even so-called "non-discretionary" spending isn't automatic.
Baseline budgeting is simply a matter of how budget proposals are calculated and presented, it has no bearing on the actual substantive process and requirements around passing a budget.
Every government only expands on average over its lifetime, never significantly or permanently downsizing for any reason short of bankruptcy or civil war. Every government only grows more expensive and more powerful over its lifetime. This is what history shows, and the lesson is that the people who run the business of government don't work for "the people" as they have claimed since the dawn of organized coercion. The lesson is that regardless of whether you support the policies of any government, that government should NEVER be trusted to work in your interest.
Shut down the banks, and just zero out the books. And for good measure, have early elections, not allowing any incumbents to run.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I don't see how you can call disagreeing with systematic anal rape of the middle class "bad at agreeing on things".
The current GOP side of the aisle is nothing more than a collection of representation for the interests of the upper 1% of wealth in the US. Nothing more, nothing less. As the distance between have and have-nots grows wider, you can thank them for it*
*The Republicanhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/01/us/politics/house-republicans-cheer-boehners-refusal-to-negotiate-on-cuts.html
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
The sad thing is that this won't result in you paying less to the government (if you want this sort of thing). All it means is that $85B will be pulled out of the economy this year, probably pushing the country back into recession. And all for some stupid "debt crisis" that is "so severe" that people from all over the globe are falling over themselves to lend us money at obscenely low rates. Enjoy your longer recession, idiots.
That is all.
The Repubs ideologically oppose the ACA because it is ideological in its conception, and practically unaffordable. Dems were hiding the real costs by doing things like not counting the Doc fix, and the bill was full of new measures that would add real costs to employers, like the extra billion per year supermarkets would have to pay for new food labeling requirements (I know, Nancy told us we didn't need to read it, so I don't blame anyone for not knowing this was in there). And what about the new taxes on medical device manufacturers? That impacts everyone!
But you give yourself away with the phrase "for-profit medical industry". Don't like profits, huh? Neither does anyone in the administration. The people who wrote and pushed this law don't like this "for-profit medical industry" or any profitable industry, for that matter, and would like to turn the whole thing eventually into a government enterprise. Like good Marxists, they want to blame the increases in costs that the consumers are currently seeing and will continue to see on the "greed" of industry, while they re-distribute wealth and buy the votes of the dependent masses. Ultimately, the private insurance industry cannot compete with a government that can borrow infinitely and would collapse. Hello, single payer system.
It's not an interpretation; it's in their own words. They give speeches plainly stating that the ultimate goal is a single payer system. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=926bPZiQhgY. Keep browsing; you'll find all their speeches. They're not exactly shy behind closed doors. Here; have some more. Donald Berwick, one of the architects of this law stated in a speech that "Excellent healthcare is, by definition, redistributional." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIK7duK9ACE.
By the way, to your last point, did you see the election results? It wasn't anywhere near a landslide and it shows that nearly half the country is against raising taxes. Maybe the same half that is not in the "protected class" and actually has to pay them?
Ultimately ACA is a spike in the heart of the economy and will only drive long term liabilities sky high. It was never meant to be paid for, because nothing is these days. That's why these "cuts", as trivial as they are, are a necessary first step.
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
And yet still, after ALL of the absolute trainwreck that the government has wreaked upon the USA, S&P still have them listed as AA+ rating.
Honestly, if I were for some reason in charge of S&P, I'd have downgraded the USA to BBB or lower at this point.
Seriously guys... speaking as someone not from the USA... all other countries see the USA as a fucking joke, and are just holding their breath and waiting for the inevitable massive collapse that WILL happen. This isn't something that's being turned around, this isn't something that the USA is climbing out of. You're getting TRILLIONS of dollars more in debt EVERY SINGLE YEAR! You can't even remotely, slightly, even by the slightest iota come close to even LEVELING OUT your decline into debt, never mind balancing it or beginning to pay it off. You're literally ACCELLERATING into debt!
And the longer it is before your economy goes belly-up and obliterates the economy for half the planet with you, the worse it'll be. The powers that be obviously have no interest in allowing you to vote for someone who will actually take a stand and balance a budget, so at no time in the forseeable future will your downward acceleration slow down.
Honestly, and I mean seriously, honest-to-god honestly, if I were an American, I'd be hightailing it out of there immediately.
Start with the Reddest States; those that willingly elected ingrates as public officials whose sole desire is to destroy civil society. Given them what they want.
Shoving more and more debt on the younger generation is child abuse in a very real form. IMHO they will have the right to repudiate the debt in it's entirety. Then maybe the socialist nonsense will be seen for what it is.
we don't need them to produce more tragedy like Aaron Swartz.
You are all going to die anyway.
How about people getting and spending their own money on the things they want to do?
Sure, the government funded guys will think this is a bad idea , what about the rest of you?
Does your science worth more than some other dude's happiness?
The president "may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them"
Come on Obama, grow a pair and keep them in session until they work out a deal. If they decide to adjourn, reconvene them immediately. They'll eventually give in.
Did you forget it was a "break" to begin with? Like the Bush League tax cuts, it was designed to be temporary from the start.
And the Sequestration was designed to appeal only to idiots, that's why Tea Partiers and Ultra-Right wingers are the only ones who seem to think it's a good idea to make cuts across the board without regard for their effects. If you buy into the myopic world of Mitch McConnel, this is how you govern, but if you want any form of progessive management of the federal government you have to look elsewhere.
Unfortunately, the fed may have a deficit, but indiscriminately cutting its speding during a down turn is still a bad idea. The only area in which this makes sense is in the military. Buying bigger guns, more bullets and increasing the sophistication of the weapons, weapons systems as well as the expense of operations in the field only makes sense if you're an over-paid contractor or an arms dealer. To me, it's about time the U.S. scales back its promotion of violence as the primary means of prosecuting foreign policy.
Government is here to stay, unless you want to head back the jungle. I don't believe it's too much to ask for government to be run well, and you shouldn't stop at surface level descriptions of budgetary issues. If you can't handle complex systems, you should at least think twice about the pablum you regurgitate during a discussion about such issues.
Social Security is fine at current levels for the next 25 years.
'Job Creators' aren't doing their job, regardless of the most favorable tax rates in decades.
Big Oil doesn't need the tax subsidies that netted them $1 trillion over 10 yrs (about the cost of war in Iran & Afgnanistan).
And Reagan's tax policies may have made sense in the 80's but this is the 21st century. Get on with the future.
Come on idiots, (not the poster, who probably just made a typo, but the mods who sent it up to +5) -- the TOTAL cumulative government debt is about $14 trillion. The deficit for this year will be in the neighborhood (probably under) of $1 trillion, still a large number but we need to keep the facts straight in these discussions.
Too many zeros for me at the speed I was reading, sorry.
When I started looking a bit more closely at this, it isn't a cut at all. It is like you said...only a reduction in spending.
See that? You grasped the truth for a second, then you immediately fell back into the oversimplified rhetoric the media is spewing.
It's not a reduction in spending at all; it's an increase in spending -- but the increase happens to be not enormous as some had hoped for.
And by "some," I'm talking about those for whom no amount of government control over our resources is too much.
Obama got his tax increase....
Yes, and already everone has forgotten what Obama pledged during the re-election campaign: "balanced" deficit reduction that consists of $2.50 in spending cuts for every $1 of new revenue. In December, the president received $600 billion in new taxes, which should now be matched with $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, by his definition of balance. He has proposed no such cuts. In fact, he has only proposed even more spending increases.
sweep EVERYONE out of Washington
Why would you want to sweep out the few who give us straight talk about how sequestration isn't a spending cut at all?
The most extreme plan to balance the budget is not at all extreme. Connie Mack's "Penny Plan" proposes six annual tiny 1% cuts that would allow revenue to catch up with spending. You can see Lanny Davis, a self-proclaimed liberal, praise the plan here.
I work on a government contract, and I can tell you it would be easy to improve delivery of government services, even as those 1% cuts are being absorbed. (I know that my productivity increases by more than 1% every year. And if they would stop allowing people like me to stay at the Ritz-Carlton while traveling, bang, you've got a huge savings on the contract.)
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Baseline budgeting has to do with how budget proposals are drafted and presented, it doesn't mean that if no legislative action is taken an appropriation automatically remains in effect indefinitely.
Baseline budgeting creates budget proposals in which every program gets an increase, by default. Effectively, this does mean that most appropriations remain in effect indefinitely -- and at ever-increasing levels -- because if the legislators don't go out of their way to reduce appropriations for particular programs, the increases sail right through.
I'd much prefer a process in which every program is assumed to be increasing in efficiency -- so by default, it gets an annual decrease. If it seeks to keep its appropriations the same (let alone to increase them), the program's director must explain why he or she failed to improve its efficiency in the past year, and how that failure will be rectified in the coming year.
The automatic increases in baseline budgeting are a self-fullfilling prophecy that every program is decreasing in efficiency. We taxpayers deserve much better from government officials who purport to be professional managers.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle knew that there was no way they could ever cut spending publicly, so they set up a situation for themselves that would tie cutting spending to their own inefficiency and inability to cut spending. Since the government is, by its nature, inefficient and unable to cut spending, spending cuts will now occur. Brilliant!
The part that's confusing me is why they are getting upset. Their plan is working perfectly. Perhaps they're still trying to maintain the public perception that they didn't really want to cut spending. /sarcasm
Seriously though, I hope they keep it up! ANY spending cuts, even unintentional, are one of the few results in politics I've been happy with recently.
something like pre-1988 levels would be a good start.
Dear moderator,
Disagree with me all you want, I know mine is an unpopular position. But flamebait? Not so, and you know it.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
THERE ARE NO CUTS! Only a diminishing in the rate of growth. Some people or projects may get less but only because other people got more and new projects were started. There will be more taxes collected and more money spent next year than this year. 2007 budget 2.7 trillion,deficit, 161 million, 2013 federal budget 3.8 trillion, 901 billion deficit.
America in 50 years
The rest of the world in 50 years
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Well either that or we all end up like this, given our lunatic governments.
Cut medicare by so much , leave military idnustrial complex and other boundongle OK, whereas at the same tiem refusing to remove the bush tax cut. Those republican plans were as bullshit as it can go.
The real issue is this does very little to deal with the national debt, which might result in national collapse in 10-30 years.
Who cares if science funding is a little down, if the whole country is going to collapse?
who put both major parties in power in the South and work out a liveable solution? We could actually have something resembling a government for the people once again, that is until we actually strip corporations of person-hood.
ced becuase they are the system? As long as they are OK, the rest will be OK! Who do you say did not understand?
why do the people get penalized for what the politicians are not doing? Why isn't part of the sequester to reduce pay to the politicians? that's the only thing that would get them to work together.
Nobody expects the American Sequestration!
La recherche est une affaire trop importante pour être confiée à des politiques.
Research is too important a matter to entrust the politicians with.