More Taxes! Less Spending!
My way! Or the Highway!
Government is the Problem! Government is Solution!
No matter how you slice it, postponing your Budget-Balancing to show-down brinksmanship high-stakes bargaining hostage negotiations time and time again -- is a helluva way to to run a Country!
The next High Noon deadline is this Friday March 1, 2013 -- after which the "responsible federal accounting world" that we've enjoyed all these years will "cease to exist:"
{cough, Wall Street Bail Out, cough}
{cough, Wars on the Credit Card, cough}
{cough, Tax Cuts for the 1 Percent, cough}
Democrats hate spending cuts. Republicans hate revenue increases.
Say Hello! to permanent gridlock, America.
It’s the ‘Obama Sequester’ -- according to Boehner
by Sarah Muller, msnbc.com -- 02/20/2013
[...]
With less than 10 days before the country hits another dramatic deadline over financing the government, the blame-game has already begun. House Speaker John Boehner continued the Republican push to label the country’s looming spending cuts as “Obama’s sequester” in a new Wall Street Journal op-ed.
In the piece published on Wednesday, the Ohio congressman, who once bragged he got 98% of what he wanted in the deal, placed blame squarely on the president. He called the sequester the “product of the president’s own failed leadership.”
[...]
Speaker Boehner publicly supported the sequestration before the president signed it into law. The Daily Beast recently dug up a PowerPoint presentation sent out from Boehner’s office to the Capitol Hill GOP on July 31, 2011, laying out support for the sequester.
[...]
After returning from its current recess, Congress will have exactly four days to work out a “sensible deficit-reduction program” to avoid the spending cuts that both sides say they don’t want.
John Boehner: The President Is Raging Against a Budget Crisis He Created
Obama invented the 'sequester' in the summer of 2011 to avoid facing up to America's spending problem.
by John Boehner, Wall Street Journal, Editorial -- February 20, 2013
[...]
The president's sequester is the wrong way to reduce the deficit, but it is here to stay until Washington Democrats get serious about cutting spending. The government simply cannot keep delaying the inevitable and spending money it doesn't have.
So, as the president's outrage about the sequester grows in coming days, Republicans have a simple response: Mr. President, we agree that your sequester is bad policy. What spending are you willing to cut to replace it?
-- Mr. Boehner, a Republican congressman from Ohio, is speaker of the House
Here's Boehner chiding, coaching, cajoling the Tea Party, way back in the day, to support the "President's Sequester" plan ... ("It moves the can down the road, doesn't it? -- So that 'Romney and Ryan' can take care of it, LATER." -- nod, nod. wink, wink.)
Oooops!
The PowerPoint That Proves It’s Not Obama’s Sequester After All
by John Avlon, thedailybeast.com -- Feb 20, 2013
[...]
It’s a PowerPoint presentation that Boehner’s office developed with the Republican Policy Committee and sent out to the Capitol Hill GOP on July 31, 2011. Intended to explain the outline of the proposed debt deal, the presentation is titled: “Two Step Approach to Hold President Obama Accountable.”
It’s essentially an internal sales document from the old dealmaker Boehner to his unruly and often unreasonable Tea Party cohort. But it’s clear as day in the presentation that “sequestration” was considered a cudgel to guarantee a reduction in federal spending -- the conservatives’ necessary condition for not having America default on its obligations.
The presentation lays out the deal in clear terms, describing the spending backstop as “automatic across-the-board cuts (‘sequestration’). Same mechanism used in 1997 Balanced Budget Agreement.”
[...]
Sequestration ... so what is it? and why should we care?
I'm a blue-blooded American so I want to know: "What's in it for me?"
Well, this article sums it up, but I particularly liked its concluding points:
Sequestration: DC's Weird Idea of Cuts
by Chris Good, abcnews.go.com -- Feb. 18, 2013
[...]
Why Does the Sequester Have to Happen?
It doesn't!
Congress and the president gave themselves a requirement to find $1.2 trillion in savings over 10 years, and they could still find a way to reach that goal before March 1. That could be tough, and barring a political miracle, sequestration will likely take effect for a few weeks.
At the same time, sequestration only looms as a possibility because Congress and the president wrote it into a law -- and they could just as easily rewrite it. They've already extended their deadline twice, and, unlikely as it may be, there's no reason why Congress and Obama couldn't simply write a new law that makes "sequestration" go away. If sequestration is an artificial crisis, it can be artificially undone.
"
Kicking the Can" -- it's a great Accounting model, eh --
it's worked so far. American people
Meet Can -- it's your lack of interest in Government affairs, catching up with you.
Hmmmm? Maybe Wall Street can help us out of a "fiscal jam" with a miniscule Transaction Tax? ... What?! that's crazy talk.
Hmmmm? Maybe Oil Companies can help us out of a "fiscal jam" by giving up their billions in Subsidies? ... What?! they earned that.
Hmmmm? Maybe the Corporations can help us out of a "fiscal jam" by closing some of those Mac-Truck Tax Loopholes? ... What?! That is accounting Job Creation.
Hell of way to run a country, heh.
Where is Deficits-Don't-Matter Cheney when we {cough don't} need him?
Maybe he could explain again how the Iraq War was going to pay for itself. We sure could use those extra oil-security-bucks about now.