Congress is shocked to learn that cutting spending means cutting services

Flight delays caused by the sequester get congress’ attention. However, “the tediously obvious point to make about this is that Congress can’t do much more than yawn about cuts to services for the poor, but a few days of air traffic delays and they’re practically tripping over themselves to offer up solutions,” writes Kevin Drum.

Poor people going hungry? We’re cool with that. Business traveler has a six hour layover? SOMETHING MUST BE DONE!

[photo by Global Jet]

Boehner’s dickishness pays off for liberals

Politico:

House Speaker John Boehner immediately dismissed President Barack Obama’s package of significant new entitlement cuts tied to new tax revenues, calling them “no way to lead and move the country forward.”

The White House had portrayed the proposal, part of the budget it will release next week, as a compromise with Congressional Republicans that could have put them on track for another run at a grand bargain.

But Boehner said he will not consider new revenues as part of the deal, arguing that “modest” entitlement savings should not “be held hostage for more tax hikes.”

Basically, Boehner’s saying that he likes sequestration better than he likes revenue — which is stupid. Every time Boehnner and his Tea Party wing of the Republican lunatic asylum pulls something like this, they sign their names on sequestration yet again. At this point, it’s the Republican sequester, because it’s absolutely clear they have no interest in doing anything about it — or even that they’re particularly worried about it

And he did liberals a favor by rejecting the “grand bargain” once again. We shouldn’t be cutting entitlement spending, because it adds nothing to the deficit. Chained CPI is merely a raid on the Social Security trust fund to plug budget holes. It’s basically legalized theft of your retirement savings.

Let the guys who blew the hole in the budget plug the budget holes. Tax the rich — it’s not class warfare, it’s getting them to pay back what they blew.

Thanks John, once again your pigheadness saves everyone from your party’s redistributionist ideas.

Behold the wonder of austerity

ABC News:

On the 10-year anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, and scholarships for children of troops who died fighting in that conflict are being cut by thousands of dollars, thanks to sequestration.

The awards, called the Iraq and Afghanistan War Grants, go to undergraduate students whose moms or dads died “as a result of military service performed in Iraq or Afghanistan after the events of 9/11,” according to the Department of Education.

Awards that have already been established are safe, but as of March 1, the dollar amount for each new grant is being reduced by 37.8 percent from what a student would have received last year.

“In the past few weeks, four of the five military branches have reported that military families will be hurt in another way by sequestration cuts: Active duty members of the Army, the Marines, the Coast Guard and most recently, the Air Force won’t be able to receive tuition assistance for upcoming courses during the rest of the fiscal year,” the report goes on.

Thanks for your sacrifice vets, now screw off and stop mooching off the gummint. This is the GOP’s sequester. Make sure you take the time to congratulate them for it.

Boehner misreads polls to claim support for GOP cuts

Greg Sargent:

John Boehner is promoting a new Marist-McClatchy poll which supposedly shows that Americans love cutting government spending. Boehner claims the poll shows that “Americans want spending cuts,” and quotes a Marist official asserting it demonstrates that Americans “are not in a mood to increase taxes.”

Which is funny, because the poll actually shows that majorities of voters would rather increase taxes than cut spending on education, Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and infrastructure. In other words, it demonstrates a central fact about public opinion that may help determine how the sequester “blame game” will play: Americans say they love cutting government but suddenly balk in a big way when you start talking about cutting specific programs.

The poll’s toplines do at first glance appear favorable to Republicans. It finds that voters prefer cutting spending to increasing taxes in general by 53-37. It finds that a plurality of Americans think spending cuts won’t impact them — and that as many think the cuts will help the economy or have no impact on it as think the cuts will hurt it.

But here’s the thing, that’s the result you always get — at least, when you aren’t specific about the cuts. People love spending cuts in the abstract, because they seem too think that half or money is overseas as foreign aid and the other half is wasted on dubious scientific studies about democracy in goldfish. But when it’s not just vague “wasteful spending,” government spending suddenly becomes very popular — which the Marist-McClatchy poll found. According to Sargent, “the poll took the welcome step — which I haven’t seen before — of asking whether Americans prefer tax hikes rather than cuts in specific programs.”

Observe:

• by 65-31 they prefer to raise taxes than cut spending on education
• by 60-33 they prefer to raise taxes than cut Social Security
• by 57-36 they prefer to raise taxes than cut Medicare
• by 53-40 they prefer to raise taxes than cut spending for transportation including roads and bridges
• by 50-42 they prefer to raise taxes than cut Medicaid

By using this poll to champion the GOP’s super-awesome stand on the sequester (i.e., let the cuts happen), Boehner is once again signing his caucus’s name to some unpopular cuts. And, of course, he’s making the mistake of pointing out exactly the sort of cuts Republicans are demanding. Worse, since he’s misusing poll numbers to misrepresent public support, he’s basically lying to you about what you believe. I’ll never understand why politicians believe that would work.

In any case, this is the GOP’s schizoid messaging on sequester cuts : if you don’t like them, they were Obama’s idea. But if you do like them, the Republican Party is responsible. As always, cognitive dissonance is no impediment to the resourceful Republican spin doctor.

[photo via Gage Skidmore]

Sequestration is bad, but just undoing it would be worse

The problem with sequestration is that it’s an attack on demand. This explains why Republicans are telling anyone and everyone how wonderful it all is. Supply-siders to the one, the GOP thinks any consideration of the demand side of the economy is pretty much just Communism — when the consensus pre-Reagan was that it was the definition of market-driven economics. When spending gets cut, people don’t get paid. And when people don’t get paid, they don’t spend money. At it’s most basic, people spending money is the economy. So the sequester is a disaster in economic terms — a lot of deep cuts means a lot of people won’t get paid. This will not be good for the economy.

However, there are people out there on the left who just want to repeal the sequester and just drop the whole thing. We could certainly do that, it’s entirely legal and above board, and maybe we could even find enough squeamish Republicans willing to defect and get it done. But the thing is that when this whole thing was going by the monicker “fiscal cliff,” there were plenty of lefties arguing that going over the cliff was better than accepting the GOP’s alternative.

In a post agreeing with Matt Yglesias on the subject, Ed Kilgore writes, “[A]s recently as a few months ago the prevailing attitude among progressives is that sequestration, in the very unlikely event it happened, would be worse for the priorities of the Right than of the Left, since (a) it would hit defense spending pretty hard at a time when the most prominent Republicans (notably 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney) were calling for more money for the Pentagon, and (b) the most important progressive priorities, Social Security, Medicare benefits, Medicaid, SNAP (food stamps), and basic unemployment benefits, were placed off-limits.”

All of this is still true. This is still the fiscal cliff we’re talking about. It would be better if Republicans hadn’t thrown us all over the ledge, but it’s Republicans who are going to have the harder landing. By cutting spending as drastically as we have, we do reduce demand, but what spending is still there — i.e., the majority of it — is vastly more Keynesian and less supply-side than it was yesterday. Whether Republicans are celebrating today because they’re dumb or whether it’s for show, they did not win here. Quite the opposite. Spending for the military-industrial complex, which Republicans represent and defend, takes the biggest and deepest ax chop, while the social safety net, which Democrats represent and defend, barely gets its bangs trimmed. It’s not the best and most ideal time to cut military spending, but if spending must be slashed deeply, let the pentagon do the bleeding.

All this means that eventually Republicans will want to revisit this when they either realize the didn’t get the best deal or decide to stop pretending that they did.

“Sequestration is cuts liberals can live with but conservatives can’t, which should bring conservatives to the table to discuss a more balanced approach even though conservatives are more favorably disposed to cuts in the abstract,” explains Yglesias. If we just do away with sequestration, then nothing happens. We don’t get the deep spending cuts, sure. But we also don’t change the dynamic in Washington, which drastically needs changing.

Yes, Republicans are screwing up the economy with these wrongheaded demands for deep, immediate cuts in spending — but they would regardless. And starting today, two things will happen: we’ll be able to start talking about the “Republican economy,” because they’ve so taken ownership of it, and Republicans will start sweating as they realize that, once again, John Boehner just handed them a cockroach sandwich, told them it was ice cream, and they thanked him profusely for it.

[photo via House GOP Leader]

John Boehner explains sequestration

It’s Boehner’s sequester now

The New York Times has an article up about Republican reaction to the sequester deadline and Boehner’s kamikaze run at the economy. That reaction is pure joy.

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.

“We asked him to commit to us that when the cuts actually came on March 1, that he would stand firm and not give in, and he’s holding to that,” said Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana and chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee. “I think Friday will be an important day that shows we’re finally willing to stand and fight for conservative principles and force Washington to start living within its means. And that will be a big victory.”

That’s just a representative sample, GOPer after GOPer steps forward to give the Orange One “credit” for triggering the sequester. “Republican aides say privately that Mr. Boehner sees no need to negotiate; Republicans are in a good place, they argue, because they want spending cuts and those cuts are happening,” the report tells us.

All of which triggers this observation from Ed Kilgore:

[The] expressions of deep satisfaction with the sequester being heard in Republican circles almost everywhere seem to have rapidly replaced last week’s talking points blaming the whole thing on the president. I guess they just can’t stop the joy in their hearts from bursting into view at the dismay of public employees and the fear and confusion of “takers” everywhere. But happiest of all is the Orange Man who for once can go to sleep at night without fear of being shivved in this sleep by Eric Cantor or humiliated by his own supposed followers. So enjoy the day, Mr. Speaker; it won’t get any better than this.

No, it won’t get better. It’ll get worse. And all this Republican triumphalism is profoundly unwise on their part. After a huge effort to pin the blame on the President, message discipline breaks down completely and House Republicans parade the sequester around like a trophy

The public was already inclined to blame the GOP for the sequester, drastically cutting spending is not going to bring the sunny economic days ‘baggers seem to believe it will, and Republicans’ fingerprints are not just all over this thing — they’ve actually signed their names on it in fingerpaints.

This is not going to turn out well. Not for me, not for you, not for the nation — but especially not for Republicans celebrating the fact that they just dropped a time bomb of their own making down their pants. This is in all likelihood all going to go so very, very wrong, leaving Republicans to explain to 2014 voters why it was exactly that they broke out the champagne and confetti on March the First, 2013.

[photo via Keith Allison]

Coming sequester frees ‘waves’ of undocumented detainees

File under “Things that will make wingnut’s heads explode.”

McClatchy Newspapers:

The federal government released groups of illegal immigrants from custody across the country Monday at the same time the White House was making its case that impending budget cuts would harm efforts to protect the border and enforce federal immigration laws.

Advocates reported “waves” of illegal immigrants being released from at least three detention centers in Texas, Florida and Louisiana.

U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement confirmed the release of some illegal immigrants Monday night but would not say how many or from which detention centers.

“In order to make the best use of our limited detention resources in the current fiscal climate and to manage our detention population under current congressionally mandated levels, ICE has directed field offices to review the detained population to ensure it is in line with available funding,” said ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen. “As a result of this review, a number of detained aliens have been released around the country and placed on an appropriate, more cost-effective form of supervised release.”

Christensen said ICE is continuing to prosecute their cases in immigration court and will seek their removal from the country.

“We’re getting reports from multiple detention centers in Texas, Florida and New Orleans where detainees who are low priority are being released in mass without bond,” said Domenic Powell of National Immigrant Youth Alliance, an immigration advocacy group. So any coming “FOREIGN GANG MEMBERS BEING SET LOOSE ON UNSUSPECTING PUBLIC!!” stories coming from the right — and they will come — are racist bullshit. These are low priority detainees, which likely means their only crime is being employed in the US illegally.

But this is the problem with the right’s focus on spending — they seem to believe that there’s a whole raft of programs and policies they take for granted that come absolutely free. It costs money for the government to do things, people. It doesn’t all run on sweet dreams and birthday wishes. It needs revenue or things like this have to happen. It’s just math.

[image source]