Story Of Obama

Lawmakers Seize on Report Detailing Impact of Cuts
Newsmax

Republicans and Democrats seized on a new report estimating that automatic budget cuts will cost the economy 2 million jobs to level election-year charges that underscored the deep political divide over how to avert the looming crisis.

Roughly five months until the across-the-board reductions kick in, the Aerospace Industries Association unveiled a new report Tuesday that warned of jobs losses, billions in losses to the economy and a blow to wages from the $1.2 trillion, 10-year cuts in defense and domestic programs. The trade group that represents manufacturers, New Hampshire's two senators and the mayors of Phoenix and San Diego cited the report in arguing that it was imperative that Congress act before the November election to avoid the cuts.

But the chasm between the two parties remains. President Barack Obama and Democrats want tax increases on high wage earners to be part of any alternative to the cuts, known in Washington as sequestration. Republicans reject that idea, contending that it would be reckless to raise taxes as the economy struggles to recover and arguing that the president is shirking his duty as commander in chief.

"Ignoring the reality of the sequester, on top of the demands by the president and his party to hike taxes, will result in fewer jobs, higher taxes on small businesses and working families, and compromise the ability of the United States to defend itself at home and abroad. This sort of so-called leadership is unacceptable," said a statement from the office of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va.

The report by Dr. Stephen Fuller of George Mason University and Chmura Economics and Analytics estimated that the cuts would reduce the nation's gross domestic product by $215 billion next year while consumer confidence would plummet. The analysis is similar to other cautionary reports that have emerged in recent months from independent organizations that analyze federal spending. All the reports carry a degree of uncertainty since the government hasn't spelled out where it would make the cuts.

Marion Blakey, president and chief executive officer of the Aerospace Industries Association, told a news conference that the cuts would result in an employment "Armageddon" and stands as a "genuine catastrophe waiting to happen," with the potential of 175,000 jobs losses per month next year.

Not far from where she spoke, a countdown clock marked the days, hours and minutes to the automatic cuts on Jan. 2 — 168 days.

Republican Sens. Kelly Ayotte and Jeanne Shaheen, both members of the Armed Services Committee, agreed that it was imperative that Congress move swiftly before the November election to avert the cuts, but they offered variations on a solution.

Ayotte favored a one-year, stop-gap effort to come up with $109 billion in cuts, giving lawmakers more time to produce a long-term solution that involves closing tax loopholes. Shaheen said a far-reaching solution is needed now that deals with all issues, including spending, entitlement programs and taxes, although she signaled a willingness to consider a short-term plan.

"We do need to do a large agreement that deals fundamentally with the drivers of our debt, which would include a tax reform model that would simplify and lower rates with looking at deficit reduction, entitlement reform, all of it together," Ayotte said. "But I don't see that happening realistically before the election."

Shaheen said, "You can't get there unless revenue is on the table. ... You got to put aside these sacred cows or you're not going to get a deal."

The report comes amid a cacophony of election-year demands and partisan backbiting over how to avert the impending cuts that will only grow louder in the coming weeks.

Former Vice President and onetime Defense Secretary Dick Cheney was meeting with Senate and House Republicans Tuesday to discuss the cuts. The House is scheduled to vote this week on legislation forcing the Obama administration to explain how it will impose the automatic cuts. Top officials from major defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, EADS, Pratt and Whitney and Williams-Pyro are slated to testify before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday as they clamor for Congress to avoid the cuts.

Then, on Aug. 1, Jeffrey Zients, acting head of the Office of Management and Budget, and Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter will be questioned by the panel on how the administration plans to make $55 billion in defense cuts next year.

Unless Obama and congressional Republicans and Democrats can agree on a plan to stave off the cuts, the military will face a reduction of $492 billion over a decade, with a $55 billion cut beginning in January, three months into the fiscal year. Domestic programs also would be reduced by $492 billion over 10 years.

The automatic cuts are the result of the failure last year of a bipartisan congressional panel to come up with a plan to cut the deficit by $1.2 trillion over 10 years. The panel had been created in the hard-fought budget law passed last summer that reduced government spending while raising the nation's borrowing authority. Decisions on across-the-board reductions, the expiration of Bush-era tax cuts and another effort to increase the country's borrowing authority are part of a packed congressional agenda after the November elections.

Using the issue as leverage, Democrats have signaled they are willing to allow the automatic cuts if Republicans continue to rebuff calls to raise taxes on those Americans making more than $250,000 a year.

Based on analyses by the Congressional Research Service and other data, the report estimated that the automatic cuts would translate into a 1.5 percentage point increase in unemployment, which now stands at 8.2 percent in a sluggish economic recovery.

The report estimated a loss of 1.09 million jobs from the defense cuts next year, with almost 70 percent from manufacturing and professional and business service jobs. Cuts in domestic spending would result in 1.05 million jobs lost, the report estimated.

"The federal agencies haven't said what they would cut back," Fuller said in an interview on the domestic cuts. "They don't have too many choices because most of their budget is payroll, where the Defense Department has more choices because most of its budget isn't payroll."

 

Ahh, more proof austerity is not expansionary, good find! It's a pleasure to have the Keynesian Republicans on board with this.

 

What they mean is that sudden, unplanned austerity will cost jobs... which is reasonable.

Spending, we all know, does produce some temporary results, but, to make them permanent, you need a better planned and deeper rooted business environment improvement. One of the best ways to do that is to curtail spending and pass on the savings to the private sector in terms of tax cuts, so that they can create jobs and get this economy moving again. Another is to get massive amounts of cash from the sale of some commodity like oil, which we could produce here and not have to import it from abroad including some pretty bad terrorist regimes.

And before you start disagreeing with me, which I fully expect, why don't you do what you're best at and post some interesting data in color-coordinated charts so I can perhaps learn something, even from the pitifully biased liberal rags you frequent? No offense, of course, I enjoy your data-driven, analytical thinking

 

Please do keep the Charts coming, it helps me with the people I work for. So many just spout out crapola they hear on Fox or Rush and don't even think anymore.

 

Yes, it is. And that was the dem position six months ago, and the reps denied it. Glad to see <del>nuance</del> understanding emerge.

 

Realistically, a generation will be sacrificed while the idiots in Washington try to figure this clusfterfuk out. Since nothing is being done to address the structural issues and we just continue to ring up the debt, lavishly blow it on whatever flavor of the month project might curry political favor...there isn't much hope of any pro-active plan to "get the economy going".

Don't look to either party for foresight or knowledge on this issue.

 

Have to agree, while both parties are keeping their eyes off the ball due to partisan politics, America suffers. The whole anyone but obama crowd admit to electing a monkey in pants if he would beat Obama. And, the dems are sinking fast to that level.

 

Democrats’ ideal voter: Illegal alien, convicted felon
by Ann Coulter

Before taking the oath of office, Barack Obama vowed to fundamentally transform the United States. He has certainly done so. For example, Obama has:

– destroyed the job market;

– sent billions of taxpayer dollars to Wall Street, companies overseas, his campaign contributors and public sector unions;

– forced the passage of a wildly unpopular national health care law on a purely partisan vote;

– come out for gay marriage;

– refused to enforce laws on illegal immigration;

– eliminated the work requirement for welfare.

How can a country that elected Ronald Reagan have Obama tied in the polls with Mitt Romney?

The answer is: It’s not the same country.

Similarly, when two successful, attractive multimillionaire women in California can’t beat a geriatric leftist like Jerry Brown or an old prune like Barbara Boxer, that’s not the same state that elected Ronald Reagan twice, either.

The same process that has already destroyed California is working its way through the entire country.

While conservatives have been formulating carefully constructed arguments, liberals have been playing a long-term game to change the demographics of America to get an electorate more to their liking.

They will do incalculable damage to the nation and to individual citizens, but Democrats will have an unbeatable majority. Just like California, the United States is on its way to becoming a Third World, one-party state.

Teddy Kennedy’s 1965 Immigration Act was expressly designed to change the ethnic composition of America to make it more like Nigeria, considered more susceptible to liberal demagogues.

Since 1965, instead of taking immigrants that replicate the country’s existing ethnic mix, we’ve been admitting mostly immigrants from the Third World. At the same time, people from the countries that sent immigrants to this country for its first several centuries have been barred.

Eighty-five percent of immigrants now come from “developing countries.” (How are they ever going to develop if their people are all on the dole over here?)

The “browning of America” is not a natural process. It’s been artificially imposed by Democrats who are confident of their abilities to turn Third World immigrants into government patrons.

It’s worked. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, 57 percent of all immigrant households in the U.S. get cash, Medicaid, housing or food benefits from the government — compared with 39 percent of native households. The highest rates are for immigrants from the Dominican Republic (82 percent), Mexico and Guatemala (tied at 75 percent).

Isn’t the idea to get immigrants with special skills? If you can’t even get a job, by definition, you do not have a special skill. Other than voting Democrat.

There’s a strange asymmetry in how this matter can be discussed. Liberals and ethnic activists boast about how America would be better if it were more Latino, but no one else is allowed to say, “We like the ethnic mix as it is.”

That would be racist. By now no one even tries to disagree.

Liberals’ other plan to expand the Democratic rolls has been to destroy the family.

Every time someone gets a divorce, Democrats think: We got a new Democratic voter! Every time a child is born out of wedlock: We got a new Democratic voter! And if the woman has an abortion — we got a new Democratic voter!

According to recent polls, Obama has a negative job approval rating of 45 to 49 percent. The reason the polls are tied between Obama and Romney is that single women support Obama by a 2-to-1 margin. The Democrats’ siren song to single women is: Don’t worry, the government will be your husband.

Our prisons are overflowing with the results of the Democrats’ experiment of subsidizing illegitimacy. Children raised by a single mothers commit 72 percent of juvenile murders, 60 percent of rapes, have 70 percent of teenaged births, commit 70 percent of suicides and are 70 percent of high school dropouts.

Controlling for socioeconomic status, race and place of residence, the strongest predictor of whether a person will end up in prison is being raised by a single parent. (The second strongest predictor is having a tattoo.)

A 1990 study by the Progressive Policy Institute showed that after controlling for single motherhood, the difference in black and white crime disappeared.

Human beings in God’s image are being born into ruined lives at rates that boggle the mind. Illegitimate children are never given a chance, their lives destroyed by this social pathology. And Democrats say: More Democratic voters!

Throw in felons voting, and the Democrats have an unbeatable majority.

 

Good to see Coulter is as crazy as ever.

 

Obama Isn't Working

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