I was speaking about your larger objection to tactics that are stupid, childish, petty or vindictive. I trust you do not require me to cite instances of Republicans behaving that way.
We don’t have a crisis - except in the minds of those whose real goal is to strangle government. Bonds being at near record low interest rates is not an indicator of a crisis. Spain has a crisis. England might be getting there, and they are not stuck with the Euro. Our recovery would be in better shape if the states hadn’t cut the hell out of their budgets, and it would have been worse if not for federal spending in the form of stimulus money.
Once we get unemployment down the budget gets to be in better shape as we pay less in benefits and get more in taxes. It has started already.
Much as I’d love if they did this, it won’t fly. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were legal. However, how about this. We have a new policy where states that pay more to the government than they get stay unchanged, but that payments to states which get more than they pay are cut to put these two things in balance. No Republican can complain about stopping states from sucking on the federal teat, can they?
It would probably improve the deficit significantly.
Sure - we can just cease all Social Security and Medicare payments that go to the retirees who moved South to the nicer weather. That should help the balance of payments.
There are a lot of Republicans that are coming to the side of thinking their party is being stupid. Sure, they keep on the idea that “both parties are bad” or that “congress is evil,” but at least that means they recognize their side is bad. Giving the Republicans a direct and legitimate way to criticize the Democrats would upset this balance and give Republicans more power in the populous.
Like it or not, it matters more if the person trying to change is doing the right thing that if the original is right. People are resistant to changing their ideals and will rationalize nearly anything to try keep them.
The reason the Republican party can do what they do is that they’ve completely given up on convincing the other half to follow them–that’s why they keep fighting to make their own more powerful with gerrymandering and such. That’s why they constantly appeal to their base. They don’t win new converts.
How about voting “reform”? Policies almost universally designed to reduce reliable Democratic constituencies? For that matter, why are Virginia and Florida (both states with more Democrats than Republicans) set such that more Congresssional districts are majority Republican than majority Democratic?
The GOP hates democracy and they’ve been pretty clear about that lately.
Edited to add:
Then as Bricker would say, “Must be okay!”.
Actually, I don’t think it’s Constitutional for Obama to carry through the sequestration at all. But if he’s going to do it, the best way to do so is in a way which makes it clear to the American people just what’s going on, so they can learn from their mistakes and do better the next time.
Balancing the flows leaves plenty of money for Social Security and Medicare. Those socialist government owned highways, maybe not.
:dubious: Sorry, but that sounds way too Huey Long.
PICAYUNE: Critics are saying that your roads stop in the middle of nowhere.
LONG: The middle of nowhere is a geographic location where people stop cooperatin’ with the Kingfish!
Why is it unconstitutional?
Because it’s Congress’s responsibility to determine spending, not the President’s. If they want to cut spending, let them decide where to cut it.
If Obama did as the OP suggests, I would support impeachment.
I’ve bolded this one point to address it.
This would be illegal. The decision is not solely the President’s.
Closing of military bases is always controversial. In order to help minimize the partisan bickering over such decisions a law was enacted to provide for a process.
The president appoints a base Closure Commission and makes recommendations. The commission takes testimony, evaluates the evidence, and edits the list. The president can approve or disapprove. Then the president must pass on the matter to Congress which can pass a resolution of disapproval. In essence, Congress also gets veto power.
The last round of base closures in 2005 had President Bush pass the commission’s list to Congress with the provision that it be accepted in its entirety or rejected outright - no editing. IMHO the is probably a good proviso.
The law requires the cuts and the method in which they are taken. Congress wrote the law. The President is simply carrying out what Congress requires. There’s simply no constitutional issue here.
I see something, namely that even if the President could do that he still has to get an actual budget approved by the House Republicans in March or the entire Federal government shuts down. If I’m John Boehner and President Obama is trying to punitively go after only Republican districts, why don’t I just refuse to pass a budget until Obama basically fellates me into getting whatever I want? If the President is already punishing “my districts”, then why wouldn’t I just shut the government down and force the whole country to feel pain until the President caves?
But the reality is you’re talking a childish fantasy scenario that makes no sense. For one, how does your world view deal with districts that are split 60/40 in favor of the GOP? Do those 40% Democrat voters deserve to suffer because they haven’t moved somewhere that is majority Democrat? The country is not so neatly divided as you seem to wish to believe, and in fact the most extremely lopsided districts are almost all Democrat 80-90% districts in heavily urbanized areas. The “red districts” tend to be a lot more like that 60/40 split I’m talking about.
Finally, there’s also there’s also the simple truth that we need to get spending under control. The President has not shown even a single bit of willingness to reign in spending. The sequester was his idea in the first place because he thought Republicans would never agree to such harsh cuts to the military. Well, I think those cuts to the military are fine, in fact I’m in favor of them. I do not care one bit about all the ancillary industries that are hurt by military cuts, we can’t justify excessive military spending just because it creates defense jobs, that perpetuates the problem and basically represents taking public resources and redistributing it to the people who own and run defense contracting companies. It’s really not a defensible reason to avoid cuts to defense. The only defensible reason to not cut defense spending is if it hurts national security, but the sequester cuts to defense could easily be born without hurting national security.
Given Obama’s unwillingness to discuss spending cuts even after the House GOP already areed to some tax increases, suggests to me the sequester is a good thing and should be allowed to happen.
And which party will suffer the most blame for the pain that causes?
We don’t have a crisis, but we have serious governmental problems. We probably get the worst services in the entire Western world per tax dollar spent, in large part because many of our entitlement programs are approached with the theory that they cannot be changed whatsoever. The Nordic countries implemented several common sense improvements to their retirement system (virtual accounts being one I would support), instead in America we feel like a system dreamed up in the 30s should never be significantly altered now that we have better examples out there as to how to run such things.
Most State governments do not have the resources or access to unlimited debt of the Federal government. They made cuts by and large because the bad economy tanked their revenues and most of the States are simply not allowed to run persistently long deficits due to State balanced budget amendments.
Our current deficit and debt numbers are not crisis level, but structural debt problems are created over time by running up ever-increasing deficits. We do have to say at some point, our “stimulus” mode is over and it’s time to start trying to approach a more reasonable deficit model. Governments can theoretically rollover deficits forever especially if they are moderate and the economy is growing, but we have not had very robust economic growth for a long time now and there is little indication to me the tired ideas of Keynes and political hacks like Krugman are going to save the day. Countries like Canada which reigned in excessive spending in the 90s have done far better than us, and present a much more realistic model for success than the never proven concept that just spending tons of money fixes everything.
Probably the GOP, they’re far worse at spin and publicity efforts. I’d say that in truth no one should get “blamed” for the sequester. It’s primarily defense cuts and I see no real problem with it, it should be looked at as a good reform. We’re still going to be running massive deficits even after the sequester kicks in, so it’s not like we’re even close to “austerity”, we’re just talking about paring down a thus far mediocre effort to spend our way to prosperity over 4 years after the financial crisis started.
I agree. But I’m starting to feel that Obama slapping the Republicans in the face might be what’s best for the country. It might get the Republicans to start acting more responsibly.
Really? Medicare is pretty well run. Sure there are people ripping it off, no shock there. I think the IRS is a hell of a lot better than equivalent agencies in lots of countries, Italy and Greece to name two. And the anti-government bias of some people hurts too. Cutting IRS auditing is dumb.
Thaler and Sunnstein talk about the retirement system of Sweden, I think. While good, people tend to put money in the fund that is probably the worst investment, triggered by highest growth so far. There are also a limited number of funds. That works fine for them, but the size of our retirement system is so great that any sort of limit on investing (which would be necessary) would distort the market terribly. While 401Ks and IRAs have not worked out as well as people claimed they would, because of lack of investment and bad investment, a system with both defined benefits and defined contributions seems the safest.
It appears that lots of people pulled money out of stocks at the depth of the crash, and are just putting money back in. That was stupid.
Which is why more money to the states through a federal stimulus package would have accelerated the recovery. Austerity at the state level hurt quite a lot, and it would have been worse without the federal help they got.
We’ll know when this happens by the trigger of the Fed raising interest rates.
Let’s not talk about the 1990s, where revenues obviously outpaced increased spending. Let’s talk about the 2000s, where the deficit increased in good times due to both increased spending and continued tax cuts. It seems Republicans are for cutting spending when we need it and increasing spending when we don’t.