Obama Privately Touts Sequester After Denying Responsibility in Debate

[longknife]

At Monday's third presidential debate, President Obama pointedly promised that sequestered budget cuts that will affect defense spending "will not happen."

OBAMA: First of all, the sequester is not something that I've proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed. It will not happen. [emphasis added]

The next morning, in an off-the-record interview with the editors of the Des Moines Register, President Obama reversed course, taking credit for a sequester that he anticipates will be "in place.":

OBAMA: "So when you combine the Bush tax cuts expiring, the sequester in place, the commitment of both myself and my opponent -- at least Governor Romney claims that he wants to reduce the deficit -- but we’re going to be in a position where I believe in the first six months we are going to solve that big piece of business." [emphasis added]

After loud complaints from new and mainstream media alike, the transcript of the President's interview with the Des Moines Register was made public today. Since these comments on the sequester represented a complete reversal of the position he took at the debate less than 24 hours earlier, it's easy to understand why the President's campaign initially wanted to keep them off the record.

From Obama Privately Touts Sequester After Denying Responsibility in Debate

Another example of the two-faced, lying Child-in-Chief and his true feelings for our military and defense establishment.

 

[waltky]

Granny says Obama already got his tax hikes, now he needs to focus on spendin' cuts - but none dat'll affect her...

Senate Democrats struggle to craft plan for sequester replacement
2/08/13 - Looking at tax hikes and spending cuts

Senate Democrats are struggling to come up with a replacement for the $85 billion sequester set to begin on March 1. Key Democrats huddled Thursday in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) office to discuss options for preventing the looming spending cuts after returning from a retreat in Annapolis where they discussed strategy with President Obama. “It's a work in progress,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), the chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Other senators said the party so far has not agreed on the balance of tax hikes and spending cuts in a package, on how big the package would be or on how much of the sequester it would replace.

The Senate Finance Committee has jurisdiction over tax issues, but Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the panel’s chairman, said he wasn’t sure who would lead the bill through the Senate. Asked if he would be the senator shepherding the bill, he responded: “Good question.” A Democratic aide said Reid has asked senators to give him options on replacing the sequester before they leave for a long President's Day recess on Feb. 15. Both Senate Democrats and House Republicans are determined to not be blamed if the sequester does go into effect.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates it would trim economic growth by 0.7 percent, while the Bipartisan Policy Institute predicts it would cost the nation 1 million jobs. Obama this week warned an improving economy would be set back by the sequester, and called on Congress to prevent at least some of the cuts with a combination of different spending cuts and tax hikes. But huge differences remain between Republicans and the White House, raising questions about whether a deal can be reached to avert the cuts. Neither side has offered a specific plan this year for replacing the $85 billion in cuts set to go into effect.

The House did approve a GOP-backed plan twice last year that would have turned off $72 billion in cuts to the Pentagon and non-defense spending. The House bill, approved last May in a 218-199 vote, would have left sequester cuts to Medicare and other mandatory spending in place. It also would have added $315 billion in new cuts, none of which would have hit the Pentagon. The House approved a similar bill in December in a tighter 215-209 vote, but the Senate would agree to neither bill, and both died at the end of the last Congress. The House has no immediate plans to move a similar bill again this year, sources have said.

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Call Obama’s sequester bluff
February 7,`13 - Obama’s bluff is being called and he’s the desperate party.

For the first time since Election Day, President Obama is on the defensive. That’s because on March 1, automatic spending cuts (“sequestration”) go into effect — $1.2 trillion over 10 years, half from domestic (discretionary) programs, half from defense. The idea had been proposed and promoted by the White House during the July 2011 debt-ceiling negotiations. The political calculation was that such draconian defense cuts would drive the GOP to offer concessions. It backfired. The Republicans have offered no concessions. Obama’s bluff is being called and he’s the desperate party. He abhors the domestic cuts. And as commander in chief he must worry about indiscriminate Pentagon cuts that his own defense secretary calls catastrophic.

So Tuesday, Obama urgently called on Congress to head off the sequester with a short-term fix. But instead of offering an alternative $1.2 trillion in cuts, Obama demanded a “balanced approach,” coupling any cuts with new tax increases. What should the Republicans do? Nothing. Republicans should explain — message No. 1 — that in the fiscal-cliff deal the president already got major tax hikes with no corresponding spending cuts. Now it is time for a nation $16 trillion in debt to cut spending. That’s balance. The Republicans finally have leverage. They should use it. Obama capitalized on the automaticity of the expiring Bush tax cuts to get what he wanted at the fiscal cliff — higher tax rates. Republicans now have automaticity on their side.

If they do nothing, the $1.2 trillion in cuts go into effect. This is the one time Republicans can get cuts under an administration that has no intent of cutting anything. Get them while you can. Of course, the sequester is terrible policy. The domestic cuts will be crude and the Pentagon cuts damaging. This is why the Republican House has twice passed bills offering more rationally allocated cuts. (They curb, for example, entitlement spending as well.) Naturally, the Democratic Senate, which hasn’t passed a budget since before the iPad, has done nothing. Nor has the president — until his Tuesday plea.

The GOP should reject it out of hand and plainly explain (message No. 2): We are quite prepared to cut elsewhere. But we already raised taxes last month. If the president wants to avoid the sequester — as we do — he must offer a substitute set of cuts. Otherwise, Mr. President, there is nothing to discuss. Your sequester — Republicans need to reiterate that the sequester was the president’s idea in the first place — will go ahead. Obama is trying to sell his “balanced” approach with a linguistic sleight of hand. He insists on calling his proposed tax hikes — through eliminating deductions and exemptions — “tax reform.”

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[Charles_Main]

He also promised America it would never happen in those debates.

 

[waltky]

Granny says when dem politicians come back from vacation dey gonna kick the can down the road - again...

Sequester just over a week away, but blame game has already begun
February 19,`13 - The fight between President Obama and congressional Republicans over the automatic spending cuts that start next week is shifting from one about stopping them to one about assigning blame if they happen.

Obama on Tuesday surrounded himself with firefighters and other first responders at the White House, where he said Republicans would be at fault if the spending reductions take effect and cost the jobs of emergency personnel. The campaign-style event marked the beginning of what aides described as an intensifying push to pressure Congress to postpone the cuts — or to blame Republicans in Congress if it doesn’t. Republicans fought back by seeking to portray Obama as the mastermind of the spending reductions, known as the sequester, thereby making him responsible for any damage they cause to the military and the economy. The escalating efforts are a reflection of how crucial the sequester has become in the long-running debate over the size and scope of the federal government.

No matter how the idea came about, the $1.2 trillion in cuts to defense and domestic spending will nevertheless serve as a high-profile test of the deep reductions in federal spending that have been a hallmark of Republican economic thinking for years. If the cuts are instituted and Americans do not see them as a major problem, that could serve as an affirmation of the GOP view that the government is unnecessarily big and a hindrance to private-sector growth. If there is a significant backlash, public sentiment is likely to shift toward the Democrats, who generally see the government as a positive force. The sequester is the result of a summer 2011 deal between Obama and Congress that was designed to be so distasteful that it would compel lawmakers to agree on a broader framework to tame federal borrowing.

That hasn’t happened. And with no recent communication between the White House and congressional Republicans, much of Washington seems resigned to the cuts taking effect March 1. The deal requires the government to dramatically trim spending on a wide range of domestic programs, including education as well as research and development. It would lead to the furlough of thousands of workers, officials say. And it would also sharply reduce spending at the Pentagon — a prospect that would help stabilize the federal debt over the next decade but that also creates deep anxiety among military leaders.

Macroeconomic Advisers, an independent economic group, said Tuesday that sequestration would cost 700,000 jobs and push the unemployment rate a quarter of a percentage point higher than it otherwise would have been. The group said in its analysis that the cuts would be a significant economic hit, given that taxes have already gone up this year and “with the economy still struggling to overcome the legacy of the Great Recession.” Obama said he prefers to delay the sequester through the end of the year by trimming other spending, such as farm subsidies, and raising more money by limiting breaks and loopholes that favor top earners and select industries, such as oil and gas companies.

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McDonnell urges Obama to work with Hill to avert sequesters
Monday, February 18, 2013 - Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell sent a letter to President Obama on Monday asking him to broker a solution to avoid billions in automatic federal spending cuts on the same day that a study found the cuts would hit Virginia and the D.C. region harder than any other area in the country.

The Republican governor’s letter came as pressure mounts for Congress to reach a deal to avoid $85 billion in sequestration cuts that would kick in if lawmakers fail to act by March 1. The cuts could put many federal employees and contractors out of work and would be most damaging in Virginia, Maryland and the District, where federal spending makes up nearly 20 percent of the local economy, according to a report released Monday by Wells Fargo Securities. Mr. McDonnell called the cuts a “blunt and unnecessary instrument” and urged the president to show leadership in crafting a more reasonable bipartisan plan. “As we all know, the defense, and other cuts in the sequester were designed to be a hammer, not a real policy,” Mr. McDonnell wrote. “Unfortunately, inaction by you and Congress now leaves states and localities to adjust to the looming threat of this haphazard idea.”

The March 1 cuts would be the first wave of $1.2 trillion in total reductions over the next decade, as approved by Congress in the 2011 Budget Control Act. The cuts would have a ripple effect throughout state economics, according to Wells Fargo economists, slowing income growth and raising unemployment while cutting into local tax revenue and raising the need for social services. The company’s report predicted the effects will be most harmful in Maryland, Virginia and the District, which have the nation’s highest concentration of federal employees and federal-spending-dependent private contractors. Defense spending accounts for 9.8 percent of the region’s economy and total federal spending accounts for 19.8 percent.

Wells Fargo economists Mark Vitner and Michael A. Brown noted that while the cuts have yet to occur, their looming presence is already weighing down the region’s economy. “Employment growth in the Washington, D.C., metro area has slowed this past year,” they wrote, adding that “defense spending has wound down, and agencies and contractors have pulled back on discretionary purchases.”

Other states that could be especially affected include Hawaii, Alaska, Kentucky and Alabama, all of which have a heavy military presence and federal spending that accounts for anywhere from 9 percent to 16 percent of the state economy. Leaders in Virginia and Maryland warn that the cuts could prove disastrous, but they also say they have taken steps to cushion the blow. Mr. McDonnell sent a memo to Virginia agencies last fall asking them to identify potential cuts of as much as 4 percent in the event that sequestration happens. Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, a Democrat, has proposed a budget this year that would grow the state’s rainy-day fund from 5 percent to 6 percent of the state’s $16 billion general fund.

Read more: McDonnell urges Obama to work with Hill to avert sequesters - Washington Times

 

[OKTexas]

At Monday's third presidential debate, President Obama pointedly promised that sequestered budget cuts that will affect defense spending "will not happen."

OBAMA: First of all, the sequester is not something that I've proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed. It will not happen. [emphasis added]

The next morning, in an off-the-record interview with the editors of the Des Moines Register, President Obama reversed course, taking credit for a sequester that he anticipates will be "in place.":

OBAMA: "So when you combine the Bush tax cuts expiring, the sequester in place, the commitment of both myself and my opponent -- at least Governor Romney claims that he wants to reduce the deficit -- but we’re going to be in a position where I believe in the first six months we are going to solve that big piece of business." [emphasis added]

After loud complaints from new and mainstream media alike, the transcript of the President's interview with the Des Moines Register was made public today. Since these comments on the sequester represented a complete reversal of the position he took at the debate less than 24 hours earlier, it's easy to understand why the President's campaign initially wanted to keep them off the record.

From Obama Privately Touts Sequester After Denying Responsibility in Debate

Another example of the two-faced, lying Child-in-Chief and his true feelings for our military and defense establishment.

Yep, with Maobama it's all about the marketing, how many people do you think kenw about the interview the next day. The lie had already been propagated to the larger audience, he got what he wanted.

 

[TheSeventhTiger]

I just mentioned in the other sequesta thread about how the fed is printing up 85 billion a month, and on top of that, what about the 100 or so billion that went down the toilet in green energy projects,,THAT THE REPUBLICANS KNEW WOULD FAIL !!!, and Bambi is having a cow over the world coming to an end over a 44 Billion cut? (keeping in mind, its not all 85 Billion at once)