Tag Archives: John Boehner

The Senate’s Vote-a-rama: Paul Ryan and GOP House FAIL

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The Hill: The Democratic-controlled Senate appears set to approve its first budget resolution in four years. Votes on amendments to the budget began Thursday night, with a final vote set for late Friday or early Saturday.

Brian Beutler explains why tuning into CSpan2 this afternoon to watch the Senate’s “vote-a-rama” could be very educational:

“…before the Senate passes its budget this weekend, it must first get through “votearama” — the quirk in the budget rules that essentially opens the amendment floodgates to eager lawmakers.

These amendments, like the budget itself, aren’t really binding. They’re highly politicized. And because there hasn’t been a Senate budget in a few years, there’s a huge pent up demand among members for using votearama as an opportunity to preen and take political stands. [...]

For instance: Last night, Senate Dems put Republicans on the spot and forced a vote on the House GOP budget. It failed, obviously, but because it’s the GOP’s central organizing manifesto, nearly every Republican member voted for it.

What went mostly unnoticed, though, is that Dems also forced the GOP to take a position on the single most politically contentious part of the Ryan budget — its call to replace the Medicare guarantee with a private insurance subsidy. That amendment was written to put members on record over whether to prohibit such a dramatic policy change. And by a vote of 96-3 the Senate answered that question with a resounding “yes.” Only Sens. Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul voted to effectively endorse Medicare privatization.

That says a lot about the politics of the Republican platform. Their commitment to a fiscal policy agenda they know to be politically toxic in its particulars is actually pretty impressive.

Democrats, by contrast, voted to preserve the tax increases their budget calls for. And they will circle their wagons around the Affordable Care Act when Republicans try to use the budget process to significantly undermine it. But on the particular, narrow issue of the ACA’s medical device tax, more than half the party joined the GOP in support of an amendment that called for its repeal…”

How bad was Paul Ryan’s night? Joan McCarter on March 22, 2013

Every Senate Republican but three voted to repudiate Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan. The three? The three teabaggiest of all: Rand Paul (R-KY) Mike Lee (R-UT), and Ted Cruz. …The slap-in-the-face vote was cast yesterday as the Senate continued working on its 2014 budget, an opportunity for all sorts of political hay-making, because budget rules allow for unlimited amendments. This one was offered by Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) Thursday night. It’s a “No Vouchers for Medicare” amendment, repudiating the Ryan budget and “to prohibit replacing guaranteed benefits with the House passed budget plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program.” The Senate voted overwhelmingly for it, 96-3.

Ryan’s budget as a whole fared a little better. Republicans really didn’t want to have to vote on it, but Patty Murray made them, by offering it as one of the first amendments. It failed, 40-59.

“There seemed to be some resistance among my Republican colleagues in bringing up the House Republican budget for a vote. And it’s pretty easy to see why that is. The House Republican approach has been thoroughly reviewed and just as thoroughly rejected by the American people.” — Patty Murray, twisting the knife last night.

Paul Ryan’s star is definitely fading. Last year, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) was hailed as the man with a plan to save America. Today, barely half of his own party thinks highly of him. According to a Rasmussen poll released Monday, Ryan’s approval rating has plummeted since the November election. In the poll, only 35 percent of likely voters said they had a favorable view of him, while a 54 percent majority said they viewed him unfavorably. That’s a stunning reversal from last August, when 50 percent of voters liked Ryan, versus 32 percent who did not.

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Also: The 39th time was not the charm on Obamacare repeal | Steve Benen on March 22, 2013: 

Remember when the 2012 presidential election ended the debate over repealing the Affordable Care Act? To a degree that is truly comical, congressional Republicans didn’t get the memo.

The Senate on Friday rejected another GOP attempt to repeal President Obama’s healthcare law. An amendment to the Senate budget resolution from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) failed on a 45-54 vote on Friday. Cruz’s amendment would have repealed the Affordable Care Act and encouraged patient-centered reforms to reduce costs.

Senate Republicans knew Cruz’s amendment was pointless, and knew it wouldn’t pass, but literally every GOP senator voted for it anyway — just because. [...]

To listen to Republican rhetoric on Capitol Hill is to hear a series of complaints about President Obama: he’s not being “serious” enough about getting things done… But it’s against this backdrop that Republicans vote, over and over again, to repeal a health care law they know won’t be repealed. They do so, in part because they have a radicalized base that expects near-constant pandering, in part because some of their leaders have broader ambitions and see these tactics as useful, and in part because these votes just seem to help Republicans feel better about themselves.

Michele Bachmann will be so upset. Literally! 

Some have the repeal count up to 54 times, with more attempts (yes, plural!) to be offered today.

On Obamacare’s Third Anniversary, Here Are Three Ways The Reform Law Has Helped Real Americans

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Also Rand Paul, the winner of CPAC, is sponsoring a far-right extremist  amendment to have the U.S. withdraw from the U.N.  Not only is that a terrible idea for several reasons (one being economically), but “a recent poll showed that eight in ten Americans believe that the U.S. needs to maintain a strong relationship with the United Nations.”

And get this: Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) “is planning on filing an amendment to the Senate budget resolution making it impossible for any gun control legislation to pass the Senate without a two-thirds majority—a standard currently reserved for the ratification of treaties. (That’s an even higher threshold than that imposed by filibusters, which can be broken with 60 votes.) ”[I]f the Lee amendment is passed, the practical effect will be that gun control can never again pass the Senate,” the far-right Second Amendment group Gun Owners of America boasted in an email to members on Friday. Lee’s amendment won’t pass. But the fact that Republicans would consider carving out an entirely new voting threshold just for gun control legislation tells you just how little ground they’re willing to concede, at least publicly, on this fight.”

More excitement (haha) at CSpan2!

Paul Ryan and the GOP have some good news and some bad news

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image recall-all-republicans

House GOP Approves Budget That Cuts Taxes For Millionaires, Slashes The Social Safety Net | Travis Waldron on Mar 21, 2013

The House of Representatives this afternoon approved the Republican budget plan authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) by a vote of 221-207, with 197 Democrats and 10 Republicans voting against it. Three Democrats and one Republican did not vote.

For the third consecutive year, the House GOP has approved a budget that ends the traditional guaranteed Medicare coverage for senior citizens, makes substantial cuts to poverty programs and the social safety net, and grants massive tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. Recent analyses have shown that the budget plan’s tax reforms, which lower top tax rates to 25 percent, would give millionaires at least $200,000 in tax cuts. At the same time, it would slash the social safety net, targeting poverty programs for two-thirds of its cuts.

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House approves far-right Ryan budget plan | Steve Benen on March 21, 2013 

Though there were whispers that GOP leaders had to worry about significant defections, only 10 House Republicans broke ranks and opposed Ryan’s budget — the exact same number of Republicans who voted against their party’s budget blueprint last year.

And what a plan it is. We’re talking about an ambitious plan to redistribute wealth — from the bottom up — with a healthy dose of “almost frighteningly ambitious” social engineering. Ryan’s budget would end Medicare, cut taxes by over $5 trillion, take health care benefits away from millions of Americans, make “massive” cuts to in programs for low-income and vulnerable Americans, and relies on smoke and mirrors to balance the budget within a decade.

It is, in other words, the exact opposite of what the American mainstream wants, and bears no resemblance to the platform the American electorate endorsed in national elections four months ago. It’s designed to satisfy folks who believe the wealthy are over-burdened by taxes and struggling families have too much access to affordable health care.

Despite all of this, 95% of House GOP lawmakers voted for the plan anyway.

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CHART: Paul Ryan’s Massive Tax Cut For Millionaires | Sahil Kapur March 15, 2013

Ryan’s plan also cuts spending by some $4.6 trillion over the next decade, targeting programs like Medicaid and the portion of the budget that includes Pell Grants and food stamps. He insists his tax cuts will spur significant economic growth, and he promises to pay for them by closing unspecified tax loopholes, deductions and credits — ideally on high incomes.

“You can actually plug loopholes and subject more of higher earners’ income to taxation through a lower tax rate,” Ryan said. “We think that’s smarter.” His promise mirrors that of Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential election. The problem, as numerous independent experts concluded, is that finding that much revenue in tax expenditures would require raising effective taxes on the middle class.

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Renewed hostage-taking | Pema Levy on March 21, 2013

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said Thursday that Republicans will require a dollar in spending cuts for every dollar that they agree to raise the debt ceiling, which the United States is expected to hit in August. “Dollar for dollar is the plan,” Boehner said at a press conference. As TPM reported Thursday, conservative House Republicans are pushing their leadership to use the debt ceiling as leverage to demand major reforms or cuts, including dollar for dollar cuts.

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Remember when John Boehner and other distinguished Republicans had great fun on Twitter using the hashtag #Obamaquester when discussing sequestration cuts? This week, Boehner admitted with his own damn mouth that President Obama “didn’t want the cuts.” Watch:

…

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More Republican good news / bad news: 

  • Bad: Mitt Romney / Paul Ryan didn’t win the election, and Republicans lost seats in Congress.
  • Good: So? Doesn’t matter, the GOP will continue ‘patriotically’ ignoring what the majority of Americans voted for.

Remember: either they’ve decided they know what’s best for all of us — or they’re going to try to get away with as much as they can until we stop them. 


image: odinsblog

There’s no way that both sides ‘do it’ when one side refuses to compromise

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Greg Sargent writes, “And so it’s now sinking in that: 1) Republicans are not getting the entitlement cuts they want without agreeing to new revenues; and 2) Republicans are explicitly confirming that there is no compromise that is acceptable to them to get the cuts they themselves say they want.

“The GOP position, with no exaggeration, is that the only way Republican leaders will ever agree to paying down the deficit they say is a threat to American civilization is 100 percent their way; they are not willing to concede anything at all to reach any deal involving new revenues to reduce the deficit, or to get the entitlement reform they want, or to avert sequestration they themselves said will gut the military and tank the economy.”

What Boehner can’t say: “You’re right, but I have no control over my people.”

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On Friday, Meet the Press host David Gregory interviewed Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH), asking repeatedly why he continued to blame President Obama for the automatic budget cuts that went into effect on Friday. At one point Gregory responded to Boehner’s assertions with, “Mr. Speaker, that’s just not true.” Listening to Boehner repeat the exact same stupid and completely false arguments that he’s been bleating for days, the actual meaning behind his words becomes obvious: “You’re right, David, but I have no control over my people.”

[During the interview], Boehner insisted that Obama and Senate Democrats were to blame because they did not send any proposal his way. “Even today, there’s no plan, from Senate Democrats or the White House, to replace the sequester,” he said.

But Gregory was unconvinced, pointing out that Obama had in fact outlined what he required in a compromise deal. Importantly, that framework included specific mention of entitlement and spending cuts—both of which are central to Republican demands—that he’d be willing to make. “Mr. Speaker, that’s just not true,” Gregory said. “They’ve made it very clear, as the president just did, that he has a plan that he’s put forward that involves entitlement cuts, that involves spending cuts, that you’ve made a choice, as have Republicans, to leave tax loopholes in place.”

“Well David, that’s just nonsense,” Boehner interrupted. “If he had a plan why didn’t Senate Democrats go ahead and pass it?” Senate Democrats did not pass a competing bill to avert the automatic cuts because Republicans in that chamber effectively filibustered their efforts. The bills passed by the Republican-led House were also a solely a symbolic gesture, as they did not address revenue increases, making them a non-starter for Democrats.

Gregory continued to rebuff Boehner’s claims, pointing again and again to the fact that Republicans had an offer from the president that included policies they very much support. “Why not give on this?” Gregory asked. “Why not allow some revenues to come from tax reform? You protect defense spending, and you unlock the key to getting the kind of entitlement cuts the president said he’ll give you.”

Boehner demurred once more, saying that Washington had to “live within their means,” and that the president already got some tax cuts on the last debt ceiling compromise. Again, Gregory was incredulous. “You yourself said, ‘Look we got 99% of the Bush tax cuts extended,’” he said. “That’s a pretty good deal.”

The best explanation for Boehner’s repetitively ignorant positions on the sequester comes from Charles M. Blow: 

Boehner’s intransigence during the talks drew “cheers,” according to a report in The New York Times, from his chronically intransigent colleagues. But their position is a twist of the truth that is coming dangerously close to becoming accepted wisdom by sheer volume of repetition. It must be battled back every time it is uttered.

Let’s make this clear: it is wrong to characterize the American Taxpayer Relief Act as a “tax hike.” In reality, much of what it did was allow 18 percent of the Bush tax cuts — mostly those affecting the wealthiest Americans — to expire while permanently locking in a whopping 82 percent of them.

But of course, that misrepresentation fit with the tired trope of Democrats as tax-and-spend liberals. It also completely ignores that it was Bush-era spending that dug the ditch we’re in.

Republicans have defined their position, regardless of how reckless: austerity or bust. However, as economists have warned, austerity generally precedes — and, in fact, can cause — bust. Just look at Europe.

But Republicans are so dizzy over the deficits and delighted to lick the boots of billionaires that they cannot — or will not — see it. They are still trying to sell cut-to-grow snake oil: cut spending and cut taxes, and the economy will grow because rich people will be happy, and when rich people are happy they hire poor people, and then everyone’s happy.

[...] The president said Friday that “there is a caucus of common sense up on Capitol Hill” that includes Congressional Republicans who “privately at least” were willing to close loopholes to prevent the sequester.

Those privately reasonable Republicans might want to be more public before their party goes over another cliff and takes the country with them.

So this congressional Republican “caucus of common sense” must either be like some secretive religious group–don’t say their names aloud!–or they must be the most cowardly, pants-wetting group of politicians that have ever disgraced the halls of our federal government.

Not only has this common sense caucus allowed their party to be defined by a group of extremists whose work ethic is to not work (and who take pride in refusing to compromise on anything, ever), but they’re allowing it to be further defined by an annual convention in which Princess Dumbass of the Northwoods* is invited to speak while a talented and popular leader like Gov. Chris Christie is completely shunned.

The Fox-Republican Party no longer has room for a rather long laundry-list of people, beliefs, attributes and ideals. We can add common sense and courage to that list.

*Charlie Pierce

“It’s just dumb. And it’s going to hurt… individual people and it’s going to hurt the economy overall.”

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“This is not going to be a apocalypse, I think as some people have said. It’s just dumb. And it’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt individual people and it’s going to hurt the economy overall.” — President Obama, at a press conference on Friday, March 1, 2013.

“Let’s make it clear that the president got his tax hikes on January 1. This discussion about revenue, in my view, is over.” — John Boehner, at a press conference on Friday, March 1, 2013.

Ezra Klein: “The bottom line on American budgetary politics right now is that Republicans won’t agree to further tax increases and so there’s no deal to be had. This is not a controversial perspective in D.C.: It’s what Hill Republicans have told me, it’s what the White House has told me, it what Hill Democrats have told me. The various camps disagree on whether Republicans are right to refuse a deal that includes further tax increases, but they all agree that that’s the key fact holding up a compromise to replace the sequester. There’s no deal even if Obama agrees to major Republican demands on entitlements. There’s no deal because Republicans don’t want to make a deal that includes taxes, no matter what they get in return for it.”

Boehner to David Gregory: “I don’t think anyone quite understands how it gets resolved.” House Speaker John Boehner told NBC News there “is no easy way to stop the budget cuts — known as the ‘sequester’ – that began taking effect Friday night, and voiced uncertainty over how Washington can solve the overall fiscal problems that have consumed the nation’s politics for more than two years.” 

…

Seems pretty easy to me: close the damn tax loopholes for the rich and powerful for a balanced approach to deficit reduction. Don’t pretend it’s so hard. On the other hand, CLEARLY Boehner has lost control of his caucus. 

The 32 DUMBEST and most devastating sequester cuts: 

In a 83-page letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), the Office of Management and Budget details the specific reductions each government program will face. Here are the dumbest and most painful cuts:

Health care – 4

  • $20 million cut from the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Programs
  • $10 million cut from the World Trade Center Health Program Fund
  • $168 million cut from Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
  • $75 million cut from the Aging and Disability Services Programs

Housing – 5

  • $199 million cut from public housing
  • $96 million cut from Homeless Assistance Grants
  • $17 million cut from Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS
  • $19 million cut from Housing for the Elderly
  • $175 million cut from Low Income Home Energy Assistance

Disaster and Emergency – 6

  • $928 million cut from FEMA’s disaster relief money
  • $6 million cut from Emergency Food and Shelter
  • $70 million cut from the Agricultural Disaster Relief Fund at USDA
  • $61 million cut from the Hazardous Substance Superfund at EPA
  • $125 million cut from the Wildland Fire Management
  • $53 million cut from Salaries and Expenses at the Food Safety and Inspection Service

Obamacare – 5

  • $13 million cut from the Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan Program (Co-ops)
  • $57 million cut from the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control
  • $51 million cut from the Prevention and Public Health Fund
  • $27 million cut from the State Grants and Demonstrations
  • $44 million cut from the Affordable Insurance Exchange Grants program

Education – 5

  • $633 million cut from the Department of Education’s Special Education programs
  • $184 million cut from Rehabilitation Services and Disability Research
  • $71 million cut from administration at the Office of Federal Student Aid
  • $116 million cut from Higher Education
  • $86 million cut from Student Financial Assistance

Immigration – 3

  • $512 million cut from Customs and Border Protection
  • $17 million cut from Automation Modernization, Customs and Border Protection
  • $20 million cut from Border Security Fencing, Infrastructure, and Technology

Security – 4

  • $79 million cut from Embassy Security, Construction, and Maintenance
  • $604 million cut from National Nuclear Security Administration
  • $232 million cut from the Federal Aviation Administration
  • $394 million cut from Defense Environmental Cleanup

Republicans, who refused to raise any additional revenue to avoid the budget cuts, have described the reductions as “modest” a “homerun” and something that “needs to happen” in order to “get this economy rolling again.”

Obama calls for replacing sequester with balanced approach:

In his weekly radio and Internet address, [President Obama] argued there was still time to find a smarter solution to the nation’s debt problem.

“I still believe we can and must replace these cuts with a balanced approach – one that combines smart spending cuts with entitlement reform and changes to our tax code that make it more fair for families and businesses without raising anyone’s tax rates,” Obama said.

He said the budget deficit now exceeding $1 trillion can be reduced without laying off workers or forcing parents and students to pay the price. “A majority of the American people agree with me on this approach – including a majority of Republicans,” the president argued. “We just need Republicans in Congress to catch up with their own party and the rest of the country.”

How will it “get resoved” for Boehner? When the minority of base-rubes who support the Idiot Brigade section of the Republican-led House start feeling it personally:

During the first full week of March every year, the mountain passes of Yellowstone National Park rumble with the sounds of hulking snow plows operated by two dozen, mostly seasonal workers. This month, the plows will be silent. The costly and complex road-clearing operation that was scheduled to start on Monday will be postponed this year because of the U.S. government’s across-the-board budget cuts known as the “sequester,” which took effect on Friday.

Park managers have to trim $1.75 million from Yellowstone’s $35 million annual budget, which will delay the opening of most entrances to America’s first national park by two weeks. Park managers will give more details on Monday. [...] In staunchly conservative Wyoming — where legislators just cut most state agency budgets by 6.5 percent despite virtually no state debt and more than $15 billion in savings — the across-the-board federal cuts are raising questions.

Residents who depend on tourism for a living are already complaining to the state’s all-Republican congressional delegation, which is on record as supporting the cuts if it means the alternative is raising taxes. “I’m sorry, but in how this is affecting us, it doesn’t seem to me like it’s fiscally responsible,” Darby said. “Somebody needs to refigure this, or we need to get better advocates.”

Gosh! You think?

Sequestration cuts: Congress suffers along with the rest of us

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[Guess who will] still be getting their paychecks. (Boehner’s is $223,500). No wonder it’s so easy for the GOP to say “fuck the military, education, FAA, Meals on Wheels.” Then leave for another long weekend.

The cuts, known as sequestration, will have no impact on the president, U.S. lawmakers and other top government officials. It is especially ironic that Congress, which has the power to avert the reductions, has nothing to lose in the negotiations, said Dan Gordon, former head of federal procurement in the Obama administration. [...]

Sequestration’s effects, including the furloughs, aren’t likely to be felt for several weeks, Gordon said. Many of the reductions won’t be felt immediately because of the 30-day notice requirement for furloughs.

The automatic cuts could slice gross domestic product growth by 0.6 percent while reducing the level of employment by 750,000 jobs, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. – Bloomberg


image quickhits:

But don’t worry! Members of Congress will feel the pinch in other ways: 

Members of Congress have taken plenty of heat for the sequester. After all, the popular strain of outrage goes, they will still get their paychecks while federal workers are furloughed, and teachers get pink slips (or not).

But hold on — lawmakers are going to feel some pain, too. A letter Friday to members and their staffs announced that the sequester will mean that some entrances and checkpoints around the Capitol complex will be closed, meaning longer lines and (gasp!) wait times to enter the buildings.

Now, members probably won’t find the lines too troublesome, as they tend to breeze by security with a flash of their coveted members’ pins. But they might find some of their favorite routes curtailed because of the door closures. And even top staffers have to go through security, so they’re likely to encounter some delays.

[...] This is just insult to injury: because of the belt-tightening, congressional travel overseas (CODELs) have been grounded, and lawmakers can’t use miljets, their most favorite mode of transportation.

So some hundreds of thousands of federal workers will see a 20% pay reduction with furloughs (one unpaid day per week through September). And some elderly people might not get a Meals on Wheels, and some teachers will get laid off. And the public won’t have a fully-functioning government. But for members of Congress, there will be some inconvenience… Okay? Boehner and his crew will have to use different doors to get into their offices.  And they’ll have to stop using military jets like their own private airline company for their “fact finding” junkets. Fly commercial? Horror. Everyone suffers.

Furlough Watch: Potential Agency-by-Agency Impacts of Sequestration

Here’s what Republicans are calling “tax increases” (implying *everyone’s* taxes)

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How much should Boehner’s personal opinion on any matter count after the election?  The Republicans in the House and Senate are protecting the rich and powerful from paying more of their fair share by refusing to close tax loopholes used only by the very wealthy, while the paycheck-to-paycheck conservative base rubes believe they’re the ones being protected from a tax increase! Fox programming at its finest.

Steve Benen:

This sentence… “Let’s make it clear, the president got his tax hike on January 1st. The discussion about revenue, in my view, is over.”

…makes exactly as much sense as this sentence: “Let’s make it clear, Republicans got their spending cuts in 2011. The discussion about spending cuts, in my view, is over.”

Below are some of the tax breaks that Obama has targeted for closure in the past and the ones that are in the Senate bill.

OBAMA TARGETS

  • CARRIED INTEREST. Preferential treatment for private equity, venture capital and other financial managers that lets them pay the 20 percent capital gains rate on much of their income, instead of the higher individual income tax rate on wages.
  • OIL AND GAS SUBSIDIES. Energy sector tax breaks including the oil and gas well-depletion allowance; the domestic manufacturing deduction on oil and gas, and expensing of intangible drilling costs.
  • LAST IN, FIRST OUT (LIFO) ACCOUNTING. An accounting technique used in some industries, especially oil and gas. Companies say this change would force them to revalue old inventory to higher prices.
  • PROFIT DEFERRAL. A deduction for interest expenses on foreign earnings for deferred taxes.
  • FOREIGN TAX CREDIT POOLING. A loophole that lets companies claim more in tax credits than would be paid in U.S. taxes by altering which of their foreign units pay out dividends.
  • INTANGIBLE PROPERTY. A tax break that allows U.S. companies to shelter overseas profits derived from intangible property, such as royalties from drug patents.
  • CORPORATE JETS. A tax break used by corporate jet owners to depreciate fleets.
  • MINIMUM OVERSEAS PROFITS TAX. A minimum tax on overseas profits and using the revenues to help companies invest in the United States.

DEMOCRATS’ SENATE BILL

  • BUFFETT RULE. Named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett, a new 30 percent minimum tax would be applied on household adjusted gross income, phased in between incomes of $1 million to $5 million.
  • OIL FROM TAR SANDS. Oil derived from tar sands would be added to a list of petroleum products that pay into a liability trust fund to help clean up after oil spills.
  • DEDUCTION FOR MOVING OVERSEAS. This provision would end the ability of companies to take tax deductions for costs associated with moving plants and jobs overseas.

…

Congressional leaders went to the White House on Friday in a last-ditch effort to avert the automatic “sequester” budget cuts that will soon go into effect. After the meeting, Republican leaders Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and John Boehner (R-OH) emerged to reemphasize that the GOP will not consider any new revenues in a deal to avert the sequester.

Boehner said, “the discussion about revenue, in my view, is over.” And McConnell added, “I want to make clear that any solutions will be done through the regular order, with input from both sides of the aisle in public debate…I will not be part of any back-room deal and I will absolutely not agree to increase taxes.”

As the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent noted, this position is absurd, and akin to Democrats demanding that 100 percent of future deficit reduction be achieved through tax hikes. As this chart shows, nearly three-quarters of deficit reduction that has been achieved since 2011 has been through spending cuts:

[...] And at the end of the day, all of the deficit reduction talk ignores the fact that the problem with government spending at the moment is that it is too low, not too high.

…

Barbara Morrill: During President Obama’s press conference on Friday morning, the most eye roll inducing moment had to be when, immediately after he had given an lengthy answer outlining the $2.5 trillion cuts already made to the deficit, the proposals he has put forth over the past two years and his willingness to reach a balanced deal with the Republican Party—who have rejected outright any sort of compromise—a member of the brain trust we call the White House press corps said:

It sounds like you’re saying that this is a Republican problem and not one that you bear any responsibility for.

Well, sure. That’s what it might sound like if you had your head up your ass. But instead of giving that obvious response, the president went with:

THE PRESIDENT: Well, Julie, give me an example of what I might do.

Q: I’m just trying to clarify your statement.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, no, but I’m trying to clarify the question. What I’m suggesting is, I’ve put forward a plan that calls for serious spending cuts, serious entitlement reforms, goes right at the problem that is at the heart of our long-term deficit problem. I’ve offered negotiations around that kind of balanced approach. And so far, we’ve gotten rebuffed because what Speaker Boehner and the Republicans have said is, we cannot do any revenue, we can’t do a dime’s worth of revenue.

And that’s when crickets invaded the room. Not a peep out of ‘em.

…

According to Boehner, the only available solution to a problem he helped create is one in which his side gets 100% of what it wants, predicated on the assumption that the massive spending cuts agreed to in 2011 have escaped Republicans’ memories altogether. At this point, most Americans want a compromise. Most Democrats want and have already proposed a compromise. But Boehner wants everyone to know there will be no compromise, and there’s nothing the president can say or do to change his mind. I’ll now look forward to pundits everywhere telling me how “both sides” are to blame.

Sequestered Saturday – Day 1: thank the Republican House and its leadership

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On Friday evening, President Obama issued an order putting sequestration into effect. He was required by law to do so by the end of the day in the absence of a congressional agreement to stop the $85 billion in across-the-board-cuts.

“By the authority vested in me as President by the laws of the United States of America, and in accordance with section 251A of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act, as amended (the ‘Act’), 2 U.S.C. 901a, I hereby order that budgetary resources in each non-exempt budget account be reduced by the amount calculated by the Office of Management and Budget in its report to the Congress of March 1, 2013,” Obama’s order stated. [...]

In a statement, Boehner said, “For 16 months, President Obama and his party in the Senate knew that unless they acted, the president’s sequester would go into effect on March 1. Still, despite the House doing its part on two separate occasions over 10 months, Democrats have yet to pass a plan of their own. So to my dismay, the sequester — a series of mandatory spending cuts proposed during by the White House during the debt ceiling talks of 2011 — went into place as scheduled. And it will be here to stay until the president and the Democratic-controlled Senate decide to join us in focusing on more responsible spending cuts to replace it.”

…

Speaker John A. Boehner, the man who spent significant portions of the last Congress shuttling to and from the White House for fiscal talks with President Obama that ultimately failed twice to produce a grand bargain, has come around to the idea that the best negotiations are no negotiations. [...] While the frustrations of Congressional Democrats and Mr. Obama with Mr. Boehner are reaching a fever pitch, House Republicans could not be more pleased with their leader. – NYTimes

…

The Republican Party’s single, solitary, post-Bush mission: Obama’s first term = make him a one-term president. Obama’s second term = punish America for voting for him again.

Both sides don’t do it. The sequester isn’t a ‘bipartisan’ problem.

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How are you supposed to negotiate with people who refuse to negotiate? It’s like Groundhog Day with the House Republicans.

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) walks with House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) to a meeting with House Republicans on the

Speaker John A. Boehner, the man who spent significant portions of the last Congress shuttling to and from the White House for fiscal talks with President Obama that ultimately failed twice to produce a grand bargain, has come around to the idea that the best negotiations are no negotiations. [...] While the frustrations of Congressional Democrats and Mr. Obama with Mr. Boehner are reaching a fever pitch, House Republicans could not be more pleased with their leader. – NYTimes

The sequester will be triggered before midnight tonight.

[image above: DailyKos]

48 hours: the GOP will crack first when the sequester hits (they’re cracking already)

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Josh Marshall sees the GOP caving sooner rather than later after the sequester hits in 48 hours. Apparently they’ll have to actually observe for themselves that Obama won’t cave and then… reality will hit.

So sequestration will begin. Obama won’t cave. And then the tension sequestration was intended to create — and in fact has created — between defense hawks and the rest of the GOP will intensify and actually splinter the party. If that doesn’t happen quickly enough, then the sequestration fight will become tangled up in the need to renew funding for the federal government at the end of March. If Republicans don’t cave before then, they’ll precipitate a 1995-style government shutdown, public opinion will actually begin to control the outcome, and it’ll be game over.

So there are real dynamics at work here that can break the GOP’s resolve in this fight but that can’t easily be turned against Obama. Which means even though months of sequestration and a government shutdown followed by Obama folding outright is a theoretically possible outcome, there’s very little about the nature of the fight to make me think it’s likely to happen.

In an earlier post, Marshall says:

…I check in on Twitter to get a feel for the political chatter of the moment. One thing struck me last night: Republicans as a group couldn’t decide between two not really consistent takes on the drama. Either a) it’s a lie that across the board cuts in spending will damage domestic or national security or make anyone starve in the streets or b) it’s an unmitigated disaster for which President Obama is entirely responsible. Tea Party Senator Ron Johnson says John Boehner will lose his Speakership if he agrees to more taxes (not likely). Folks in the House are pledging the President won’t break them. This is what a crack up looks like.

Meanwhile at the White House: A Balanced Plan to Avert the Sequester and Reduce the Deficit

1

And meanwhile in the Speaker’s office: John Boehner: Sequester Requires Senate To Get ‘Off Their Ass’ (VIDEO)

Get off their ass?! Boehner just came off a week-long vacation!

Steve Benen reviews Boehner’s impotence: 

So, as Boehner starts to lose his cool in public, let’s pause and help him understand the one detail the Speaker seems to have forgotten: in this Congress, House Republicans have done no work on the sequester. Literally, none. Boehner and his caucus haven’t voted on an alternative; they haven’t unveiled a substitute plan; they haven’t shown up for bipartisan negotiations. Since this Congress has gotten underway, Speaker and his team have known this threat is coming, and they’ve done absolutely nothing about it except whine in public.

Senate Democrats, meanwhile, have put together a compromise plan that requires concessions from both sides So when Boehner demands that senators get “off their ass,” the Speaker isn’t just being crude, and he isn’t just being dishonest, he’s actually been reduced to irony.

[...] Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) added that Boehner would lose his speakership if he struck a bipartisan compromise.

Let’s not brush past the significance of this: with dangerous sequestration cuts looming, a bipartisan compromise is now impossible because the Speaker of the House is impotent. He can’t turn off the threat he helped create because his followers won’t let him. He can’t delay the threat, either, because his followers won’t tolerate it. And he can’t compromise because those darned followers have deemed that unacceptable, too.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says, ”the reason (Boehner)’s not bringing something up over there is, he can’t pass it. He can’t get his caucus to agree on anything.” And House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer believes that House Republican leaders are ”constrained by fear of the Tea Party.”

Because the GOP has no vision or planning skills, it’ll have come to this:


azspot: Rob Rogers: Political Theater

3 days to sequestration: Republicans are on a frenzied, desperate messaging tour

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#Obamaquester #Obamaquester dammit! #Obamaquester!!

Josh Marshall: “…the side begging and whining the most about sequester is unquestionably the side that thinks its losing.”

David Corn deflates the GOP’s latest “fall back” claim, which is: “The sequestration-defusing plan cooked up by the supercommittee was not supposed to have any tax revenue hikes in it. Consequently, the Republicans maintain, Obama is disingenuous now to call for side-stepping the sequestration with a “balanced” approach that includes spending cuts and revenues. Indeed, Boehner and other GOPers crowed at the time that the debt ceiling deal did not include any tax hikes. Yet the deal Boehner approved did nothing to limit the supercommittee to considering only cuts for a sequestration-ducking plan. The legislation did allow for the possibility of revenue boosts. In a fact sheet, the White House was explicit on this point, noting the supercommittee would ponder “both entitlement reform and revenue-raising tax reform.” And Boehner essentially acknowledged that at the time.”

Steve Benen on yesterday’s House Republican Leadership press conference: Each of the Republican lawmakers said President Obama was responsible for the sequester, which is ridiculous. Each of them said it’s up to Democrats to think of a way to make Republicans happy enough so that Republicans won’t hurt the country on purpose. Each of them said the House already voted to replace the sequester, hoping no one would notice that in the current Congress, GOP leaders haven’t even proposed, better yet voted on, a replacement. But consider this gem from the House Speaker: “Listen, the president says we have to have another tax increase in order to avoid the sequester. Well, Mr. President, you got your tax increase. It’s time to cut spending here in Washington.” I assume Boehner is smart enough to know how little sense this makes, which makes his comments an example of willful dishonesty. It’s true that policymakers accepted new revenue in 2012, but policymakers also cut spending by more than $1.2 trillion in 2011. Looking again at Boehner’s quote, it’s very easy to turn it around on him: “Well, Mr. Speaker, you got your spending cuts.”

Hunter / DailyKos on ‘Sequester here we come!’: The problem for Republicans, however, is that they’ve premised nearly all of their obsessive anti-Obama rhetoric around the notions that (1) the government can’t create jobs, (2) all government is bad, and (3) the scary deficit monster is going to kill us all. They can’t stomach voting to lift the sequester when that means acknowledging (1) that government does indeed employ lots of people, (2) it does indeed do stuff that their constituents like, and need, and (3) the deficit is in fact not currently as important as the more immediate task of not screwing up the tenuous national economy, because Basic Economics. You can hear them already in the early stages of talking-point disarray on the topic, but Republicans are supposed to be for harsh, painful cuts to government. That’s their brand. …So for Republicans, the only way to dodge the sequester is to fess up that their entire debt ceiling freakout, and all of their demands afterwards, and all of the loudest premises of their electoral existence in these last few campaigns were all mere bluff… Forget ideological integrity in these things: You have to acknowledge that even if the Republicans wanted to ditch every austerian, anti-legitimacy-of-government, anti-revenue principle they’ve been working themselves into a froth over during these last years, they’re at least going to need a little more time to come up with a creative explanation for it. A new Twitter hashtag isn’t going to cover that one.


via randomactsofchaos: Rob Rogers/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (02/15/2013)

Andrew Sullivan collected a couple of forecasts for how this is going to look when people start paying attention.

Last week, Sprung wondered about the politics of the spending cuts: In trying to pin the sequester on Obama, Republicans never really say exactly what they’re blaming him for. Is it for actually wanting the savage cuts — a suggestion that doesn’t pass the laugh test? Or for being weak or foolish enough to let them inflict it on him and on the country? That must be it — notwithstanding it doesn’t reflect very well on them. They’re the ones insisting that the meat ax is better than a) simply calling the thing off, since no one intended to enact it, or b) replacing it with a mix of more targeted cuts and modest tax hikes.

Bernstein adds: [W]hen voters start complaining about specific cuts, Obama can offer to replace them with specific tax increases voters favor. But all Republicans have to offer to replace specific unpopular sequester cuts is … other specific unpopular cuts. This is not a playing field that sets up well for Republicans.

More from Bernstein:

When sequestration hits, then, it will hit one popular program after another … and there are no large chunks of the budget which Republicans can offer as alternatives. Indeed, the one place where Republicans are actively fighting cuts — defense — is one of the least popular, ranking 16th of the 19 categories Pew asks about. Then it comes to the fight over budgeting in general and sequestration in particular, there’s probably nothing more important to know about public opinion than the fact that most people like spending cuts in the abstract, but oppose them for virtually all specific programs. Republicans believe they will be able to shift the blame for unpopular sequester cuts to Obama. But Obama will be repeating that he wants cuts balanced by tax increases on the wealthy and corporations, while the consensus Republican position will remain that we should only have deep cuts — indeed, that we should go farther than the sequester.

NOTE: The above vote (H.V. 690) was taken on August 1, 2011. Three days before, on July 29, 2011, the Republicans passed the Budget Control Act of 2011 in the House (H.V. 677) without one Democratic yes vote, but with 218 Republicans voting yes.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) told Fox News that Boehner would lose his speakership if he agreed to a deal with the president that included new tax revenues.

Remember that “new tax revenue” means closing loopholes and subsidies for rich people and corporations. That’s really not being explained in the media enough.

Politico: “The Republicans’ message on the sequester couldn’t be clearer: They don’t have a unified one. There seem to be three distinct camps: Most congressional Republicans appear willing to let the sequester happen since they can’t replace it in time. Others want the cuts to be even deeper. And still others wish that House Speaker John Boehner and President Barack Obama would just get in the same room and negotiate a deal, even if it includes the tax hikes that most Republicans abhor.”

First Read: “So here’s the GOP’s muddled message: First, these cuts could cost jobs and money; second, the Obama administration is trying to scare the American people about these cuts; and third, these cuts could cost jobs and money. What’s happening here: Congressional GOPers are split.”

Roll Call: “The seemingly inevitable sequester cuts that will slash $85 billion from the federal budget on Friday reflect not only Washington’s political paralysis but a bitter lobbying failure for K Street interests across the board.”

Jed Lewison on Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) contradicting himself in one interview – Position 1: the President is wrong to scare-monger about the consequences of the sequester because it won’t be so bad. Then, Position 2: the consequences of the sequester will be bad and the President will be blamed for it.

Ezra Klein on what Republicans could possibly be thinking:

  1. One answer is that they’re hoping the sequester gives them so much leverage that the Democrats fold and accept an equivalent or larger package of spending cuts that Republicans prefer. But I can’t find any Republicans who actually believe that will happen.
  2. Another explanation is that Republicans don’t want to cut tax deductions now — which is the key to any deal with the Democrats — because they want to use those deductions to pay for rate-lowering tax reform. But if they’re not open to new revenues, they’re not getting rate-lowering tax reform while President Obama remains in office. And if they take power after Obama leaves office, they can just lower tax rates without paying for it, as they’ve done many times before. 
  3. A third answer is that the anti-tax pledge holds that cutting deductions to reduce the deficit is a tax increase, and Republicans won’t vote for a tax increase, even if it results in a policy outcome they vastly prefer. In other words, it’s ratio-myopia.

Think Progress: A new poll released by the Hill newspaper has found that more voters favor slashing military spending versus cutting spending on domestic programs like Medicare and Social Security in order to reduce the debt and deficit. [...] Forty-nine percent of respondents said they would support cutting military spending, while just 23 percent said they would support slashing Social Security and Medicare. An overwhelming majority, 69 percent, said they would oppose cuts to social programs. Moreover, 37 percent said the U.S. spends “too much” on the military, 38 percent said “just the right amount” and only 18 percent said “too little.”


image: ihatepeacocks

Related: 

This is not the President’s sequester. This is a GOP-manufactured crisis. Again.

Sequester week: 5 excuses the GOP is using to crash the government

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Marc Ambinder looks at 5 reasons why the GOP might risk the sequester, which could also be called 5 excuses the GOP is using to crash the government (emphasis, parenthetical comments below are mine):

(PRIDE, HURT FEE FEES) 1. The White House may have oversold its victory in convincing Republicans to jettison Grover Norquist’s tax pledge and for winning tax hikes with a correspondingly miniscule amount of spending cuts when the issue first came to the foreground at the end of the year. Democratic triumphalism made Republicans feel like they had lost big-time, when in fact, there really was no alternative…

(LIES) 2. The sequester, many GOPers have come to believe (have they?), was Barack Obama’s idea. Therefore, since it was his idea, if it happens, Republicans will be able to blame him for its consequences…

(SHIRKING) 3. The sequester does not directly hit GOP constituencies at first. It hits government workers, primarily, in terms of layoffs and furloughs. Actual pain will first be felt by people who rely on government services that aren’t entitlements. So maybe, (maybe?) soft Republicans won’t be disgusted…

(HOSTAGE TAKING) 4. Maybe: The best way to force the White House to make a deal is to let the sequester happen, and then let its effects swirl around a bit, and let panic set in.

(STRAIGHT UP LAZINESS) 5. Spending has to be cut. The sequester does it summarily, but it does indeed accomplish a core goal of the revanchist wing of the GOP.

There’s actually a new excuse! #6 –

(STUPIDITY) 6. One of the new John Boehner sequestration talking points is that Republicans couldn’t possibly accept any new revenue, even the revenue he was publicly offering two months ago, because there are still wasteful government programs. As Boehner wrote Wednesday, “no one should be talking about raising taxes when the government is still paying people to play videogames, giving folks free cellphones, and buying $47,000 cigarette-smoking machines.”

Guess what?

  • The $47,000 smoking machine… turns out to be a piece of medical research equipment used by the Veteran Administration: “VA Researchers are using the smoking machine to cause chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in mice by the same mechanisms by which the disease occurs in Veterans and others who smoke cigarettes,” 
  • Paying people to play video games is not some federal grant to mail checks to good-for-nothing slackers to lounge around playing their newfangled machines while honest God-fearing Americans go to work. It’s a grant from the National Science Foundation to test the hypothesis that some cognitive loss owing to old age can be slowed through certain video games.
  • Giving folks free cell phones [to the poor] has existed since 1984, and obviously moved from landlines to cell phones, on the theory that a phone is vital for things like being able to contact police or fire departments, get a job, and so on. Recipients get 250 free minutes a month — which, at less than ten minutes a day, doesn’t leave room for lots of chatting about Justin Bieber.

Yep, you’d have to be a complete idiot to take anything the GOP says at face value – especially when they talk about “raising taxes.” In the current debate over revenue and sequestration cuts, it sounds like the President and the Democrats want everyone’s taxes raised. Nope. In reality, it means that the President wants to close tax loopholes for the wealthy to acquire some additional revenue to put towards the deficit, which would make the spending cuts less deep. Reality and the Republican Party is the difference between information and disinformation.

Doesn’t matter who’s at fault for the sequester. Here’s the REAL issue we’re faced with…

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Republicans in Congress passed the sequester and President Obama signed it. The problem isn’t who’s to blame for the sequester, a disagreement that’s received enormous attention in the media. The actual problem we’re faced with is summarized excellently by JOSH MARSHALL:

Each party’s plan to avoid it is dramatically different, a fact that’s gotten virtually no attention. While the President wants a mix of cuts and new revenue through closing loopholes, the Republican plan is to replace draconian cuts to military spending with draconian cuts to social insurance programs.

Boom. There it is.

This is not the President’s sequester. This is a GOP-manufactured crisis. Again.

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questionall: Remember this when the shit hits the fan. If 218 House Republicans hadn’t voted Aye on ROLL CALL 677, the sequester would have died in Congress. ~ http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2011/roll677.xml

WITH NINE DAYS TO GO before $85 billion in automatic federal spending cuts begin, some Democrats on Capitol Hill are calling on Republican leaders to reconvene the House immediately and find a way to avert the spending reductions known as the “sequester.” Both the House and Senate are in recess this week. “This is an unnecessary self-inflicted wound on the United States economy,” Rep. Robert E. Andrews (D-N.J.) said in a conference call with other House Democrats to highlight some of the fears and adverse affects of the sequester they’re hearing about back home. “Congress should come back to Washington to fix the problem.”

###

Anyone want to bet that the Republicans don’t come back before Monday? And before you drink the Fox propaganda tea about this crisis being “Obama’s sequester,” let’s take a look at some FACTS from recent history:

STEVE BENEN: So, if we’re stuck in the argument GOP leaders insist on having, we might as well note they’re wrong about this, too. For Republicans, President Obama “proposed and demanded the sequester.” We know this isn’t true. Indeed, at the time, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) bragged about Republicans getting the sequester into the Budget Control Act.

JOHN AVLON:  I happened to come across an old email that throws cold water on House Republicans’ attempts to call this “Obama’s Sequester.” It’s a PowerPoint presentation that John Boehner’s office developed with the Republican Policy Committee and sent out to the Capitol Hill GOP on July 31, 2011. Intended to explain the outline of the proposed debt deal, the presentation is titled: “Two Step Approach to Hold President Obama Accountable.” It’s essentially an internal sales document from the old dealmaker Boehner to his unruly and often unreasonable Tea Party cohort. But it’s clear as day in the presentation that “sequestration” was considered a cudgel to guarantee a reduction in federal spending—the conservatives’ necessary condition for not having America default on its obligations.

130215-Avlon-Boehner-Sequester-embed
A slide from the final page of Speaker John Boehner’s Powerpoint to House Republicans on July 31st, 2011, obtained by The Daily Beast. Click to download full pdf.

GREG SARGENT explains why GOP leaders are repeating falsehoods and spinning desperately:

Republicans may simply be putting on a game face about the politics of the sequester because they may view it as a necessity at this point. As you may recall, a top GOP aide told Politico recently that a government shutdown fight might be necessary for Republican lawmakers to get the need for an apocalyptic confrontation with Obama “out of their system,” i.e., for “member management purposes.” But The Hill reports that Republican aides have revised this strategy; they have decided the sequester is a better target than the government shutdown to stage this confrontation. And so the sequester is apparently necessary for rank and file lawmakers to get the need to stick it to Obama “out of their system.” Republicans have defined victory as agreeing to no new revenues whatsoever, so it’s unclear whether there’s any other way out of this for them.

And finally, and most importantly, MICHAEL TOMASKY points out something that almost everyone seems to forget: Congress passed sequestration before the president signed it, and the whole self-defeating exercise was carried out in response to Tea Party Republicans’ insistence that we play chicken with the debt ceiling, which ultimately cost America its AAA credit rating:

So fine, the White House proposed it. It did so only after months of Republicans publicly demanding huge spending cuts and refusing to consider any revenues and acting as if they were prepared to send the nation into default over spending. In other words, this was the administration’s idea in much the way that it’s a parent’s “idea” to pay ransom to a person who has taken his child hostage. There was a gun to the White House’s head, which was the possibility of the country going into default. And then, when it was all put into legislation, it was the Republicans who passed the Budget Control Act of 2011 in the House, with 218 of them voting yes. So even if administration officials proposed it, it would have remained just a proposal if those 218 Republicans hadn’t supported it (no House Democrats backed it). Most Republicans agreed at the time that the sequestration trigger was a good thing—that it would force everyone to get together and agree to a path forward and a long-term budget deal.

We all have such short memories. And by we, I mean our mainstream media and conservative base-rubes.

Related: 15 Republicans Who Want The Damaging Sequester To Occur

Sequester week: for accuracy call it the #Teaquester or the #Boehnerquester

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The Republican-led House voted itself a vacation this week without one Democrat voting for it. House members will not return to work until Monday, February 25, which gives them exactly four days to work on a solution to the sequester.

Speaker John Boehner writes in the Wall Street Journal that the deep automatic spending cuts set for the end of the month were President Obama’s idea. But a July 2011 PowerPoint obtained by John Avlon shows the opposite may be true. “It’s a PowerPoint presentation that Boehner’s office developed with the Republican Policy Committee and sent out to the Capitol Hill GOP on July 31, 2011… It’s essentially an internal sales document from the old dealmaker Boehner to his unruly and often unreasonable Tea Party cohort. But it’s clear as day in the presentation that ‘sequestration’ was considered a cudgel to guarantee a reduction in federal spending–the conservatives’ necessary condition for not having America default on its obligations.” — Political Wire

At this point, it’d be a mistake to suggest the bipartisan talks have stalled, since there [are] no talks — Democrats have unveiled a sequester alternative, and Republicans have not; Democrats have said they’re open to compromise, and Republican have said they aren’t. The probably of avoiding next week’s mess is quickly approaching zero. With this in mind, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has a 900-word op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on the subject, devoted almost entirely to a desperate attempt to avoid blame. In the larger context, it’s only mildly annoying that Boehner invests more energy in pointing fingers than working on a solution, but it’s far worse that the Speaker peddles blatant falsehoods, lacking enough respect for the public and the political world to be honest with them… — Steve Benen

As the deadline nears, many Republicans are not only unwilling to look for bipartisan solutions to stop the sequester – they are gleefully looking forward to its impact on American families:

  • “It’s pretty clear to me that the sequester is going to go into effect…Read my lips: I’m not interested in an 11th-hour negotiation.” – Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
  • “Sequestration will take place…I am excited. It will be the first time since I’ve been in Congress that we really have significant cuts.” – Republican Congresswoman Cynthia Lummis (R-WY)
  • “Sequestration needs to happen…Bottom line, it needs to happen and that’s the deal we struck to raise the debt limit.” – Republican Congressman Scott DesJarlais (R-TN)
  • “I think sequester’s going to happen…I think people want it to happen.” – Republican Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK)
  • “We’re willing to let it go through till they (Democrats) respond to us.” – Republican Congressman Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA)

“That’s the biggest problem with the Republicans. They think spending is the most important thing. It’s not.” [Former Virginia governor and conservative Republican Jim Gilmore] says he has urged GOP leaders to back down and compromise to prevent the so-called sequester spending cuts from going through – “I keep telling them, you’re going to lose this” – and he has strong words for congressional leaders’ focus on deficit reduction as their primary economy goal. “Above all things,” he says, “they shouldn’t be talking about debt and deficits. Because the left’s got an answer for them.” That answer would be, raise taxes, which Gilmore says is the opposite of what the economy needs right now – and he’s quite critical of Democrats for pushing tax increases. But spending cuts won’t help the economy either, he says. — Wonkblog

President Barack Obama lashed out against Republicans, saying they are unwilling to raise taxes to reduce deficits and warning that the jobs of essential government workers, from teachers to emergency responders, are on the line. [...] Obama cautioned that if the $85 billion in immediate cuts — known as the sequester — occur, the full range of government would feel the effects. Among those he listed: furloughed FBI agents, reductions in spending for communities to pay police and fire personnel and teachers, and decreased ability to respond to threats around the world. [...] ”People will lose their jobs,” he said. “The unemployment rate might tick up again. So far at least, the ideas that the Republicans have proposed ask nothing of the wealthiest Americans or the biggest corporations,” Obama said. “So the burden is all on the first responders, or seniors or middle class families.”

The most likely scenario, according to officials on both sides of Pennsylvania Ave, is that Congress will kick the can on the sequester until the government’s budget authority runs out on March 27. Congress will have to pass a continuing resolution by that date, or the government will be shut down. Indeed the shutdown is a more acute, if routine, threat — with nearly all of the government ceasing to operate immediately instead of broad-based spending reductions.

Next month, our government will be subject to devastating across-the-board spending cuts, fed furloughs, and / or a government shutdown — all of which will be a disaster for most Americans, the economy, national security, future growth, and reducing unemployment. The entire country is now at the mercy of the two sides of the GOP: all the conservative extremists who were parked in Congress by tea party ‘patriots’ and Jebus freaks who live in deep red gerrymandered districts, and the Republican Establishment whose only allegiance is to the wealthy elite. As of now, the majority of us are just hostages.