Robert Borosage, co-founder of the Campaign for America's Future, writes
Republicans to America: Sequester You:
Bizarrely, Republicans are beginning to strut about sequestering America. Sequestration budget cuts – the automatic, mindless across-the-board annual cuts of roughly $100 billion from military and domestic spending – were designed to be repugnant. Legislators, it was assumed, would overcome partisan division to come up with something else less destructive.
There’s grumbling that shows how it was supposed to work. Senior House Republicans in charge of appropriating funds for government are in open revoltagainst the cuts. “The House has made its choice: sequestration — and its unrealistic and ill-conceived discretionary cuts — must be brought to an end,” Rep. Harold Rogers of Kentucky said after he was forced to pull the transportation funding bill from the floor for lack of votes. House Budget Committee Chair Rep. Paul Ryan entered into the current budget negotiations confident that they could come up with something “smarter.”
Hawkish Republicans like Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham warn the military sequester cuts “jeopardize our national security."
Robert Borosage
But Republicans can’t cut a deal. Their first principle isn’t deficit reduction; it is shielding corporations and the wealthy from paying a penny in increased taxes. No shuttering of tax havens that allows companies like Apple to dodge billions in tax liability. No minimum tax so that billionaires don’t pay a lower rate than their secretaries.
Their second rule is no retreat on spending cuts. Any new spending must be “paid for” by other spending cuts. So any relief from sequestration cuts must be “paid for,” despite the fact that the deficit is coming down faster than any time since the demobilization after World War II and is costing jobs and slowing any recovery.
Unable to agree on anything else, Republicans have decided to boast about sequestering America. Senior Senate Republican Charles Grassley says that “sequestration is working.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has led the charge, telling Republicans to stay the course, arguing that the sequestration cuts have been “highly successful.”
This is truly bizarre. Sequestration cuts are as repugnant as advertised – and will get worse as bureaucracies exhaust ways to mitigate them. They cut the necessary as deeply as the needless. They gore the vulnerable as well as the baroque. Reports tell the stories of infants losing access to vital nutrition, children thrown out of Head Start, schools forced to lay off teachers and crowd classrooms. The best young scientists are laid off, and look abroad for employment. An already inadequate food and drug inspection gets even worse.
And these cuts sequester America’s future. [...]
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Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2012—There was no 'war on coal,' but there should be. Just not on the backs of miners. Delay is denial:
Coal is a disaster for the climate and, although it provides good-paying jobs in areas where there often are no others, it also is a disaster for coal communities and miners themselves. For those reasons, with his last election campaign a success, President Obama should push hard to get regulations in place that work to force an end to most coal mining—a ban on mountain-top removal, regulations that control CO2 emissions of existing plants, more funding for enforcing health and safety regulations while coal is still mined, installing every obstacle the executive branch can come up in the path of soaring U.S. coal exports and negotiating a no-exports pact with the world's other leading exporters (Russia, Australia, Indonesia). He should also find various innovative means to support and invest in the future of coal miners and other coal-company employees who will lose their livelihood as coal production is cut back. |
Tweet of the Day:
On
today's Kagro in the Morning show, it's post-nuclear Monday!
Greg Dworkin rounds up the fallout, points us to the
WaPo's ACA enrollment story out of KY, Peter Beinart's rejection of the stupid Munich trope on the Iran deal, and alerts us to the upcoming 12/14 report. WalMart's CEO retires. CNN's nuclear option coverage gives the grassroots/netroots (and me) some credit for pushing things through. Revisiting the possible contesting of the Virginia AG election in the state legislature. Sarah Palin attempts to address the nuclear option news. Why no "talking filibuster"? And will we see changes on legislative filibusters? The 2005 fight offers us some insight.
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