Freaking out over the sequester? Imagine if there were actually REAL government cuts?
 

I highly recommend Reason Magazine. I read it online daily.

Brilliant.

http://reason.com/blog/2013/02/25/if...-cuts-will-tan

"If You Think the Sequester Cuts Will Tank the Economy, I've Got a Bridge In Brooklyn You Might Want to Buy

Nick Gillespie|Feb. 25, 2013 11:22 am

Or some prime real estate in Florida. Really, it's not swamp land at all. And those aren't alligators, they're dogs.

Our story thus far: Back in August 2011, as a condition of raising the debt limit by as much as $2 trillion, Congress and the president agreed to cut about $900 billion in anticipated spending. They also created a committee that was charged with coming up with an additional $1.2 trillion in cuts over the next decade to expected spending by the end of 2011. If Congress didn't pass those cuts, then come January 1, 2013, automatic cuts - a sequester - would kick in, split between defense spending and non-defense discretionary (with a light sprinkling of some even smaller cuts to entitlements). Congress failed to pass anything and then, when the 2013 deadline arrived, it pushed the deadline for the cuts to start to March 1.

Widely quoted as $85 billion for spending in fiscal year 2013 (which ends on September 30), the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) underscores that just $44 billion of spending reduction are slated for 2013, with the rest coming in later years. So what we're talking about is trimming $44 billion from total federal spending expected to be $3.6 trillion this year. If you use the $85 billion number, that's about 2.4 percent of the budget. If you use the $44 billion, you're looking at 1.2 percent.

For The New York Times, the sequester signals "an era of government austerity." For the White House, it's the end of the world. As USA Today reports, President Barack Obama has made it clear that everything from unemployment insurance to school lunch programs to cops on the beat will be scaled back.

In his weekly Saturday radio address, Obama said the cuts will slow the economy, eliminate jobs and "leave many families who are already stretched to the limit scrambling to figure out what to do."

Energy Secretary Steven Chu has revealed that sequestration would reduce the number of houses being "weatherized" by the feds by "more than a thousand."

We should try to define austerity. In its latest budget document, the CBO notes in table 1-1 (look at outlays) that, assuming sequestration happens, there will be a slight dip from 2012 to 2013 in discretionary spending levels. Then discretionary spending rises every year through 2023. Total federal spending is projected to rise from $3.5 trillion in 2012 to $5.9 trillion in 2023. Good luck matching that sort of austerity in your salary gains over the next decade.
http://media.reason.com/mc/_external...pg?h=254&w=350

Here are three questions for folks wetting their pants about the sequester:

1. Under what sort of math do you figure that cutting $44 billion or $85 billion from a total tab of $3.6 trillion is anything more than a rounding error? Half of the cuts are slated for defense spending, which has grown massively over the past decade-plus. Do you really think that the military can't cope?

2. Do you really believe that the sequester cuts will tank a $16 trillion economy? And if so, what's the multiplier on that? GDP is counted in such a way that most government spending automatically gets counted as increasing the amount of economic activity (the same doesn't hold for private spending, where different conditions hold). Do you at least agree in theory that government spending has been cut in the past without ruining the economy (and if you don't, why not)?

3. When will conditions be right to actually cut spending? There's a raft of anti-sequester people - such as Barack Obama - who pay lip service to the idea that government spending (especially government deficit spending) needs to stop or be reduced at some point in the future. But like St. Augustine in his partying period, they don't want to get straight just yet. So when might that be? If we can't afford to cut a tiny fraction of current spending now - after a year-plus of knowing this was coming and a major punting on the original deadline - when might we?"

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So STOP LISTENING TO THIS "THE SKY IS FALLING" CRAP!


(And just a P.S. to this.... for those people running around screaming about government workers getting furloughed, just like every other time there has been a government cut because of a "budget crises", those workers were all hired back and ALL paid their back pay..... basically a paid vacation.)






Just FYI...


.:2 cents:

yea listen to this guy instead

Which figures do you have an issue with? Doesn't it cross your mind for just a moment that MAYBE the people predicting all this doom have a vested interest in convincing people that the government must always be spending more, and that we must all be reliant on the government? Doesn't even a HINT of doubt exist in your mind that perhaps politicians are motivated to keep control of as much money and power as they can, and must convince us all to go along with it?




.:Oh crap

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Rachel Maddow opened her show last night with a good segment about how basically the US style of governing has been reduced to "lurching" from self created crisis to crisis, in the hopes that the threat to the American public will be a bargaining chip. The problem is, we're almost over it now, because wolf has been cried too many times for us to give a shit.

I totally agree. It is a good start is all. They do not even begin to talk about entitlements. We pay less in interest on our debt then we did in 2000 when we owed half as much. Not much we can do about that. Soc Security needs to be stretched out again. Medicare the same. Federal govt pensions are never talked about but they need a redo as we can't really keep that up. Military pensions... same thing. Sorry folks but we can't work a few years and get paid until we are a hundred and expect it to be hunky dory.

Bring on the meat cleaver! :winkwink:

Never give out more in a tax return than what the person paid in. That would be a nice start.

Does anyone know what the government has sent out in earned income tax credits?

the fact they're still cutting anything but military would be one

the fact that the people involved in creating this pile of shit is now responsible for 'fixing it'

the fact that 'don't listen to that guy.. listen to me!' has about as much credibility as Barney the dinosaur

Cut anything but education.

If you want us to be in an even worse position years down the road, then start laying off teachers and cutting pre-school programs. An educated child is the core of our future economy.

Republicans seem to to look at education as an expense, but its more of an investment.

I can tell you one area that it will hit and that's real estate. Right now the housing market is just starting to stand on it's two feet again and if the sequester happens it means getting home loans is going to be much harder as the Federal backing wont be there.

That means that home sales will crawl to to halt again..

the entire system needs to be re worked.

We spend more per child on education than any other country, and our education system SUCKS.... maybe we should look at HOW we are spending the money.... and take a look at the NEA's visegrip on school budgeting, hiring and firing, etc....



.:2 cents:


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In judging the source, just follow the money and power to find who has the vested interest in which story to sell....


.:2 cents:


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Sperbonzo FTW!!!!!!!!

scholar and a gentleman :winkwink:

Ok that's fine...spend the money more wisely, but cutting blindly is not the answer.

Like I said in another thread... If this happens, Congress is not allowed to go home and doesn't get paid until it's fixed.

Question for you.
What do you say about the people that will be out of jobs or not getting checks?
This seems to be what the social networks are up in arms about.
They don't care what is in the budget as long as their husbands or whoevers check keeps coming in...

Like I said, all the workers will get ALL of their back pay and their jobs back. As for the government checks that won't be sent out, there is a specific reason that they target this, and not all the crazy little programs that are meaningless government waste just to increase the fiefdom of politicians. Just like when a city government is making more during a boom, they go out right away and hire more administrators and staff for themselves. As soon as the boom is over and their revenues go down, they say that they have to raise taxes or else they will have to fire firemen and police..... never the useless admin staff that they hired during the boom.

It's all just bullcrap to convince the public that government can never ever get smaller.


And we all seem to fall for it.



.:2 cents:



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It's always been funny to me that the same government that puts up signs in federal parklands, that say, "Please don't feed the animals, as this makes them dependent and unable to care for themselves", is that same government that has us all convinced that we would all starve without them.


Think about it.



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Think about how they are selling this to us. Basically we are running at over 25% over our income every year... AT LEAST. IF they don't fix that soon, we will face either default and massive inflation in order to wipe out the debt, and either way it's going to be a disaster.

Now we come up to a 2.5% cut, (10% of what we actually need to do in order to balance the budget), and they have us believing that the country is doomed, and everything is going to fall apart. Time magazine even ran a piece saying that the entire aviation industry would be crippled.

Basically they are setting up the public to believe that no cuts are possible without ruining everything. The people in power will have theirs and be gone by the time everything comes due.... The joke will be on the rest of us.



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That is exactly what they are doing. They refuse to solve the problems so we just put it off and put it off and every few months there is a new crisis that each party blames on the other. People are starting to get sick of it.

There in is the root of he problem. There was an article I read yesterday about a company in Alabama (I think, but might be wrong about the state) that basically takes the old beat up Humvees the military uses and rebuilds them so they can continue to use them. It is cheaper than buying new ones. The story was how the company has 4,000 employees and will lay off 400 of them next week if the cuts that are scheduled go through. One guy, who makes an average of $45K per year there was featured saying that he was worried because he didn't know what he would do if he lost his job.

I can understand his fear and nobody wants to lose their job, but the reality is that if there are going to be cuts some people will lose their jobs. Nobody wants to volunteer for it so each politician fights to keep the government supported businesses in their areas open. It is one of the main reasons many Republicans are against defense cuts. It isn't because they are afraid that we will be invaded, they know that many of these defense contracts are based in red states and there would be big layoffs in those areas if the military cut spending.

In a way it reminds me of something that happened in my state several years ago. There was a ballot measure to build a big new state prison. It passed easily, most people wanted it. When it came time to build it there was lawsuit after lawsuit from communities not wanting it built near them. Everyone wanted it, so long as it wasn't in their area.

Ok, that is what I was looking for....
I also know if / when it does go thru, the people normaly get all back pay.
Yes it sucks not getting a paycheck, but sucks for the millions without a job and some for years...

Yep, it sucks, but in the end if they are going to make any kind of meaningful cuts someone, somewhere is likely going to lose their job. Some places might have the ability to do it through attrition and let people retire/quit/get fired for other reasons and just not replace them, but still, when you pull billions out of the budget that money is often connected to someone, somewhere.

There is some stuff they could do like remove a bunch of the foreign aid that we give other countries. They could also offer government workers the option of taking a pay cut in order to keep their jobs, but I don't know how much they could be able to cut just doing those few things.