I have come to the conclusion that “the sequester” is EXACTLY what the norquists and the president wanted in the first place

they want to give our assets away, destroy the middle class in the process and this “sequester” gives them cover and license

The quest for more cuts goes beyond fiscal numbers and into the domain of ideology and ‘smaller government’ mania.

Rs and Ds seem united to go for both sequester cuts and also for cuts to social insurance programs too. They already have cut almost 4 trillion, so why the big push to cut more?

Baker just wrote this piece about how Medicare is slowing almost to the amount which Obama is proposing to cut. Baker asks why cut more? Is this about fiscal reality? No.
It seems to be about ideology.

Thanks, Jon.

The ball on which I am trying to keep my eye:

Slashing social safety nets will quickly kill some Americans and shorten the lives of others.

Give it another couple of months, when the USDA furloughs start happening.

That’s when the meat plants that are the biggest employers in certain rural CDs (and which are among the bigger campaign contributors to the Republicans that represent them) will be forced to shut down for at least one day a week, until the end of the fiscal year on September 30.

That, my friends, is why the sequester won’t be made permanent. Because in order to maintain the starvation-level funding of the sequester, furloughs — and plant shutdowns — would need to become permanent. And the meat plants won’t stand for that.

Exactly. No one is to blame for this it just happened, who can say, it’s not OUR fault. Make sure you vote in 2014 for your current (pre-bribed) Representative.

And when the smoke clears, what will be the fate of social insurance programs??

This is from Jon’s post on Sperlings email to Woodward:

(Cuts to SS, MA, and Medicaid are in the DNA.)

But I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying saying that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim. The idea that the sequester was to force both sides to go back to try at a big or grand bargain with a mix of entitlements and revenues (even if there were serious disagreements on composition) was part of the DNA of the thing from the start. It was an accepted part of the understanding — from the start. Really. It was assumed by the Rs on the Supercommittee that came right after: it was assumed in the November-December 2012 negotiations. There may have been big disagreements over rates and ratios — but that it was supposed to be replaced by entitlements and revenues of some form is not controversial. (Indeed, the discretionary savings amount from the Boehner-Obama negotiations were locked in in BCA: the sequester was just designed to force all back to table on entitlements and revenues.)

A once-great society in disastrous decline. This will not end well, and it won’t take too long.

Agree, in the near future Mexico will be building a fence to keep gringos out.

Another benefit to the parties is that their blame games breed more distrust of the other side which strengthens the grip of each to it’s constituents.

When the Roman Empire fell it devolved into rampant promiscuity and massive sex orgies.

Can we look forward to that???

Hey, I’m desperately searching for “the silver lining”.

Am I the only one that finds that both ironic and hilarious at the same time???

What’s the relationship between USDA furloughs and meat plants shutting down? Why would the furloughs cause the plants to shut down?

Is that bc the gov inspectors will be laid off one day? If so, I can think of an easy fix for the Rs.

Yes, but will be at the price of cuts to SS and Medicare?

I am pretty sure I know what will happen being a little psychic.

Because the meat butchering and packing plants have to have a USDA* inspector in every day to verify that the plants are meeting the safe processing requirements.

There aren’t enough inspectors NOW. The ones we do have have been working overtime which the sequester does not permit. Due to the budget restraints of the last few years there have been very few new hires, and with no appropriation bills passed there will probably be no new hires for a very long time.

When the furloughs hit — some factories will have to close on the day(s) they don’t have an inspector on the premises.

*Note: USDA is responsible for doing food safety inspections NOT HHS/FDA.

Maybe, but today the market is up and Wall Street is happy. What could go wrong?

I’m thinking Reid, Boner, and McConnel with Feinstein, Pelosi, and Snowe. Did that change your mind?

We should hope something bad happens.

If this all blows over without the sky falling the Republicans will be bragging that the sequester worked and they cut spending and we need more of the same.

Okay …..just ewwwwww. I need to bleach my brain now.

Orgies notwithstanding comparing New York to Rome is not wrong.

Actually, one thing you can always depend upon is for conservatives to over reach. I think the majority of the country would not be happy not having their meat and meat by products but would be better with it than with cutting grannies retirement stipend. I do think that conservatives are going to have to hard sell the idea that this is our permanent newer leaner government that we’ll all learn to love and as they cut more and more it gets hard to ignore the elephant in the room wearing military fatigues(particularly if our side keeps harping on it.)

It’s better than the usual conservative attempt at understanding economics when they compare it to Greece, who have no financial autonomy thanks to their decision to use the euro.

thank you.

The silver lining is going to be watching all these red states that decry Uncle Sugar and bemoan big government actually attempt to balance their budgets without the Federal help. It’s going to be even more fun when you think of the fact that THESE are the same people who brag about the fact that they’re minimum wage states with little to no regulation and that they are friendly to business(try pulling the money to maintain roads out of someone making the minimum). How long do you think the people actually living in these states are going to tolerate having to pay for all the services business use and the lower standard of living before realizing that they were sold a line of garbage by conservatives wishing to enrich themselves? My guess is not long.

NPR dividing the generations to flog Seniors with Sequester hit children’s programs cuts: (This is the best advertising the elites can buy to promote cuts.)

Link Here.

Does this place Greenblatt in with the liberal enabler of cuts category; the one inhabited by Alter and many others?

If the sequester battle is a draw, this means that Republicans are being rewarded for their strategy of lying, obstruction, and refusal to compromise.

It also means that, once again, Democrats are doing a miserable job of advocacy. Par for the course.

You make some very good points vis Red States, Uncle Sugar & paying for stuff. However, I’m saddened to say that I think it’ll take the Tea Baggers a really really long time until they can let go of their heavy addiction to what they deem “conservative ideology,” albeit I don’t really know how to characterize their “ideology” anymore. It’s no longer conservative.

They are authoritarian tribalists (not the only ones, but I’m discussing rightwing Tea Partiers), who don’t really want the wool pulled from their eyes cuz it means that they’re WRONG about nearly everything anymore. That’s a big thing to face: that you’ve been royally HAD, and that your richie-rich IDOLS are really thugs, crooks, cheats, grifters & two-bit whores who’ve been ripping you off by dangling bright shiny objects in front of your dull face.

I don’t see things ending well, but I’m sure not counting on most citizens – of whatever political persuasion – waking up & “figuring things out” anytime soon, no matter what happens with the Sequester.

Actually the lion’s share of bailouts and tax breaks go to the industries that took their jobs to China and stole their pension money to finance the new Chinese factories.

Once UI is over 25% I can see these people becoming fans of the Green New Deal or some variation of it and hopefully Bush, Cheney, Mozillo, and Dimon behind bars.

Well maybe they want to destroy the middle class. But I think the one percent anyway believe austerity is the “moral” thing to do. These are entitled people. They have no idea what it means to be part of the working class.

Yes, sounds right. But I think tea partyiers are a minority even in the south. I think the rural south simply hates the democrats. But back there in the thirties there were a decent number of liberals there. Only thing was the racism. That dies hardest of all.

Response to “Baffles..” @30

Maybe, but I’m not holding my breath. Don’t count on it.

I *still* see way too many Letters to the Editor complaining about lazy shiftless people who “don’t feel like working” and want “free hand outs.”

Well, Tea Partiers? Conservatives? Republicans? Libertarians?

Pick your label, but they’ll cling & grasp to their so-called “ideologies” no matter what.

Of course, I don’t expect much of anything different from most trad-Dem voters, who tend to be equally authoritarian tribalists, as well.

Obama and his Republican allies are getting what they’ve wanted all along. Obama says what his base wants to hear, but always delivers the opposite.

Most of the normal (let’s say silent majority) don’t write letters to the editor so I don’t know if your observation would be indicative of the majority of people. I hear allot of OWS sounding 1% hating comments coming from more and more “low information” former Limbaugh listening boobus americanus so I’m on the optimist side of the street this week. :)

People give up their beliefs only very slowly. But, in the south, we see NC, Verginia and Florida moving. Some even think Texas as well.

The thing is that Obama et al want to privatize everything, like if they’re cutting budgets, they’ll just expand self-regulation to meat like what they’ve already done with poultry:
http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/04/05/usda-seeks-to-let-poultry-companies-self-inspect-their-product/
The assumption on this thread seems to be that this part of the austerity will end because only federal employees can do a certain job, but this is part of the whole scheme to privatize and deregulate everything…the solution to this will be self-regulated meat plants rather than re-funding government inspection employees.

Thank you for making this point. It’s helpful now to look at most things through the lens of privatization and wealth transfer. In this example, probably the costs of self-inspection would be re-imbursed as a tax subsidy, be done by existing employees, and used as an excuse for higher meat prices.

We’ll see. From what I understand there has been an influx of some of these jobs back. Apparently, the between the uppity Chinese insisting on higher wages and the cost of shipping relocating wasn’t the great idea many of these businesses thought it was. Go figure.

That’ll work all the way until the first few people die because some lax private business decided it didn’t actually need to police the food supply.

Something like this will happen.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/06/meningitis-outbreak/1895155/

It always does. There is a reason we created the USDA to begin with.