{"id":8157,"date":"2012-06-25T11:37:04","date_gmt":"2012-06-25T18:37:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=8157"},"modified":"2012-06-25T11:37:04","modified_gmt":"2012-06-25T18:37:04","slug":"need-details-on-spending-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/06\/25\/need-details-on-spending-cuts\/","title":{"rendered":"Need Details on Spending Cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Because Republicans on the Super-committee and Republicans in the House refused to compromise on revenue enhancements, and because Republicans blackmailed America and threatened our good faith and credit,  by holding hostage our ability to pay for previous spending, we face $1.2 Trillion in spending cuts beginning in January.  We need details on specifically what will be cut.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"25sequester\"The Pentagon\u2019s powerful Republican friends in Congress are griping about a required $500 billion cut to the military budget over nine years beginning in January. It would \u201chollow our military,\u201d said Speaker John Boehner. It\u2019s a \u201cnational disgrace,\u201d<\/a> said Representative Howard McKeon, chairman of the Armed Services Committee.<\/p>\n

The critics are right that taking an across-the-board cleaver to the Pentagon is bad policy, but that is because across-the-board cuts in general are bad policy<\/strong>. They never seem to mention that the cuts are matched by an equally devastating slash at domestic spending \u2014 $500 billion from education, law enforcement, environmental protection, and health and safety programs, among hundreds of others. Both are part of a $1.2 trillion sequester required by the law that ended last year\u2019s debt-ceiling fight. <\/p>\n

Democrats seem to be the only ones who care about the domestic side of the cuts, and now they are finally starting to counter the Republican insistence \u2014 fueled by heavy pressure and big campaign donations from military contractors \u2014 that the defense cuts are the only damaging aspect of the sequester<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who has been worked up about the Pentagon cuts, recently proposed legislation requiring a detailed accounting of which military programs would be affected, and the impact on national security. Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, proposed a countermeasure<\/a> that would require an accounting of the entire sequester. The two measures were combined and passed by the Senate on Thursday as an amendment to the farm bill\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n

I expect no headway whatsoever, regardless of which programs are to be cut, because Republicans are happy to harm America as long as they think it might harm Obama as well.  Nevertheless, identifying the worst cuts will give us a road map to follow to restore funding when we have a better Congress, hopefully in 2012.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Because Republicans on the Super-committee and Republicans in the House refused to compromise on revenue enhancements, and because Republicans blackmailed America and threatened our good faith and credit,  by holding hostage our ability to pay for previous spending, we face $1.2 Trillion in spending cuts beginning in January.  We need details on specifically what will […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}