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Capitol Hill Scrambles To Save Military Spending After Debt Deal
Republican leaders in Congress yesterday moved to avert potential cuts in the military budget that were part of a bipartisan budget agreement made last year.
House Speaker John Boehner with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the foreground. (Newscom/UPI) The Hill reports today:
A group of Republican senators introduced legislation Thursday that would wipe out automatic defense cuts by reducing the federal workforce by 5 percent and extending a freeze on federal pay through June 2014.
The GOP senators, led by Arizona’s Jon Kyl and John McCain, wish to prevent $500 billion in automatic defense cuts set to begin in January 2013.
Their bill would eliminate the first year of the cuts by hiring back two workers for every three who leave. It would save $127 billion in all, with $110 billion covering automatic cuts to defense and non-defense spending scheduled for 2013 under last summer’s deal to raise the debt ceiling.
Republicans have zeroed in on the federal workforce as a way to reduce deficits. On Wednesday, the House approved extending a federal pay freeze in a bipartisan vote. Seventy-three Democrats voted with the GOP.
At Talking Points Memo, Brian Buetlers writes this morning:
Republican leaders in Congress have all but reneged on a key agreement they reached with the White House last summer rather than reconsider their unwavering stance against new tax revenue.
Relations between the Obama administration and the congressional GOP were already just about as bad as can be. But even so, this sets a precedent future Congresses and White Houses will remember when partisan mismatches force them to strike deals and govern.
“I’ve got concerns about the sequester,” House Speaker John Boehner told reporters Thursday. “I’ve made that pretty clear. And replacing the sequester certainly has value. The defense portion of the sequester, in my view, would clearly hollow our military. The Secretary of Defense has said that, members of Congress have said it. But the question I would pose is, where’s the White House? Where’s the leadership that should be there to ensure that this sequester does not go into effect.”
“Sequester” is budget-speak for across-the-board cuts. But the cuts he’s talking about were part of a deal he recently claimed he’d honor.
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58 Comments so far
Show AllThat's true ... the same should said for the 'democrat' party as well. It's sad to think that Obama, the 'democrat' party's leader and biggest star in a generation is actually to the right of Richard Nixon. But ... that's what a couple decades of supporting the lesser evil will get you.
Voting for the leeser evil shares the blame for the sorry state of the US. Five deacdes of large, well funded union busting and shipping jobs oversees have also made great contributions to the destruction of the US as a nation.. Economic inequality is at the root of the current political and economic crises faced by the US, along with a virulent militarism that has occupied US government economy, education and culture..
Of course they will be baptized before they are left out in the elements to die, we are a Christian nation after all.
Yeah, I think that is a FAR better solution.
The U.S. military über alles!
Throw hundreds or thousands of people out of work just to preserve the bloated, sacro-sanct military!
When it comes to the war machine, jobs for Americans mean nothing to the Party of Money (the Repugs & the Dimwits), for the armed forces are the stick that the U.S. corporations wield when foreign peoples refuse their "offers" and "free markets."
I do believe he also isn't a big fan of unions, is he? He's certainly not a fan of the Constitution, which is really surprising since he is a Constitutional scholar and such.
He also, has set out to defund Social Security, through the payroll tax cut. And man is this man a vicious right winger when it comes to hunting down Americans and killing them outright, no arrest, no trial.
And he is so concerned about your Constitutional rights articulated in the Fourth Amendment, that he is satisfied to protect such, through a signing statement (NDAA).
Mr Transparency, right winger Obama, isn't really that big of a fan of transparency as it turns out, being that he has gone after, and prosecuted whistle blowers, that were exposing criminal behavior within government.
You have a problem with either principle, perception, or memory, or all.
I don't.
Well I'm glad to hear that "weatherization" money was made available by Obama. That should help protect those residents, who are going to suffer the increased weatherization effects of a rapidly warming planet, with Obama taking his courageous stands for "clean coal" and Big Oil.
What sickens me the most about your advocacy of the Right Wing Consummate Con Man Obama, is that you completely ignore his assault on the Constitution, his war mongering, his refusal to hold anyone accountable for war crimes of the Bush Administration, his putting in charge of his economic policies the same Wall Street robber barons and then preventing criminal investigations, his signing of the NDAA with a f'ng signing statement, his prosecution of whistleblowers, his hand in the torture of Bradley Manning, his attack on teacher's unions…I can hear you sigh "what attack on teacher's unions"? I mean, it must be raining outside right?
So lets take a break so you can be faced with some more facts that you don't like, in your metamorphosis from a Carter Democrat, to a right winger who doesn't know it yet, apparently.
Here is an excerpt from an article, on how the Obama Administration has taken a very Republican position on teacher's unions…
"It would be comforting to think that this attack on public workers is coming only from the Republican Party and the political right, but one of the most powerful, and insidious efforts to undermine public worker unionism – the attack on teachers unions – has been driven by foundations and funding sources traditionally associated with the Democratic Party and has been enthusiastically endorsed by the Obama Administration.
Not only did the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, and the President praise the firing of union teachers in Central Falls Rhode Island who refused to accept the unilateral revision of union rules by the local Superintendent, they have provided huge financial incentives to states and municipalities to create privately managed, non union charter schools and to adopt procedures for rating teachers based on student test scores which will allow for the mass firing of teachers judged “incompetent” by these criteria."
I won't bother with the link, copy a few sentences and google it yourself. Or just simply google something like "Obama attacks teacher's unions".
This list of how Obama – through HIS OWN ACTIONS, and his leadership within the current right wing leadership of the Democratic Party – is FAR to the right of Ronald Reagan, and in many cases to the right of George W. Bush, could go on, and on.
Many have articulated such a long list, but frankly, I don't want to waste any more time on you.
Just know you support a right winger, and thus, you've become one.
"Dont tell me about the teachers union I am retired on PERS."
So, you're upset that I pointed out that the Obama Administration has attacked teacher's unions? I'm not the one to blame.
So, it's all hue_sir_name's fault eh?
I've addressed the reasons why Obama is demonstrably a right winger, and according to my own conscience, I can't vote for him, AGAIN.
Your intellectual dishonesty is pathetic. If Obama loses, and we end up with Mitt Romney, yes, it will be "Obama's fault", not mine.
No one could make me happy? Wow, I wither under your intellectual attack. Good grief.
And you did not address any of the very specific arguments made by hue sir name, because you don't have any real counter-arguments other than Republicans bad, Democrats not as bad,
That bullshit may fly at the HuffPo but the analyses of readers and posters here at commondreams is way beyond such flimsy and deceitful partisan propaganda.
Obama is a murderer, a torturer and the best friend of the banksters. He has no respect for the constitution or for the rights of his fellow Americans.
Obama pledged to be the most transparent administartion ever but instead has become the most oppressive towards whistleblowers, already prosecuting twice as many as any other President including the hateful W.
Wake the F-ck up and stop believing and spewing idiotic partisan lies!
The Democratic party - and the administration - as portrayed by you here, looks much worse to me than the Republican party. We know where the Republicans stand, we know what their program is. They serve the wealthy and powerful few well and are quite effective on their behalf. But the Democrats? They pretend to be on the side of the working class, and then sell us out again and again. They need to stop saying that the Democrats are better than the Republicans, or else take responsibility for their deceptions when it is shown that Democrats have no intention to live up to the expectations that put them into office in the first place.
Republicans do not "hate government." They love government that serves the wealthy few. The anti-government crap is a sales pitch, a deception, a ruse.
The Democrats do not represent any serious opposition to the Republican agenda. "At least we are better than the Republicans!" damns the Democratic party it does not make it look good.
We have a different set of expectations from the Democratic party than we do from the Republican party, based on what Democrats - and supporters - say. Apologists for the party want to continue to woo people by raising expectations, and then deny that the expectations are rational once the Democrats betray us again.
What sort of fire fighters would defend their ineffectiveness by saying "at least we are better than the arsonists!"
Fire fighters who refuse to put out fires, who refuse to investigate or punish arson, who hob nob with and buddy up to the arsonists, who get paid off by the arsonists, and who then go around setting a few fires themselves are not better than the arsonists. They are much, much worse.
Workers must support a Socialist Party agenda that ends policies of eternal wars and instead, initiates development of the nation's infrastructure, educational system and economic parity. Let's throw out all of the reactionary criminals that have sold out our futures for the benefit of a few.
I've never defended one Republican, or any right winger, including Obama, in any of my posts, much less, be a defender of the Koch Brothers.
If you must know, at this point, I don't know if I will vote for anyone for president. It certainly won't be for the Consummate Con Man Obama, who is FAR to the right of Ronald Reagan, and his actions relative to assertions of plenary executive powers, is actually to the right of George W. Bush.
He has much more in common – relative to his demonstrable priorities according to his own actions as president – with the Koch Brothers, than say, you.
You don't seem all that familiar with the man, the free marketer, Obama. Familiarize yourself, because your post relative to that, demonstrates ignorance.
And I suppose, given your comment, that I shall have to clarify, that of course I won't be voting for any GOP troglodytes, or Ron Paul for that matter. So you see, there is a difference between you and me. You'll be supporting, right winger, corporatist, free marketer Obama, who has much in common with Republicans and the Koch Brothers, and I will have none of it.