Part One of Five
In recent months, concerns over sequestration and its impact on the U.S. military have reached a fever pitch in Washington.
Sequestration “would destroy the military” and cause an “inability to defend …
Congress
9.4%
Countdown to Sequestration: Four Months to Go
Gosh, we started this countdown five months ago, and darned if the nation’s “leaders” have made absolutely no progress toward dealing with the country’s fiscal mess. As you may recall, last year’s Budget Control Act set …
Sequester: Muster the Bluster
Many have predicted that the January 2, 2013 “sequester” of $55 billion out of the $620+ billion Pentagon budget for 2013 would cause a lot of noise, even hysteria, during the presidential and congressional elections.
How right they were. But as usual, the politicians, the advocates and the pundits are paying attention to themselves, …
A Congressional Insider on Why the U.S. Political System Is Broke
Mike Lofgren came to Washington to work on Capitol Hill 30 years ago, when Ronald Reagan was rebuilding America’s “hollow military” after its Vietnam hangover, and the Cold War was in its final throes – although we didn’t know it yet. He spent 28 years working for Congress, the last 16 as a senior analyst on the House and …
“Rent-Seeking”
Rent-seeking is a phrase increasingly in vogue by folks without real jobs. Wikipedia defines it as “an attempt to obtain economic rent by manipulating the social or political environment in which economic activities occur, rather than by creating new wealth.” Synonym: the U.S. defense industry and its allies, c. 2012.
Thomas …
Sequestration Countdown: Five Months to Go
It’s almost funny the way that Congress poured gasoline into its chambers last year, with each party convinced the other side would never light the match. Yet that is what is drawing closer every day.
Ash Carter, the …
What Defense Cuts?
The fear-mongering about impending defense cuts is becoming deafening. Yet even if sequestration happens in January, the Congressional Budget Office says the Pentagon will still be spending as much as it did in 2006. While the cuts may be crude – that is how Congress wrote the law imposing it – they are not draconian.
Here’s a …
$72.3 million
“Anyone who tells you sequestration is going to simply disappear because both sides want to avoid it is either fooling themselves, or trying to fool you…We are also not going to allow just the defense cuts to be replaced without addressing the domestic spending cuts that would be devastating to the middle class.”
“The world hasn’t gotten any safer.”
Sequestration’s Shadow Darkens
House and Senate Republican leaders released a letter Friday — the 13th — that will effectively kill an increasingly favored option in Washington to temporarily delay the onset of sequestration (automatic budget cuts) by three or six months.
It comes on the heels of President Obama’s former campaign manager floating the idea …
Countdown to Sequestration: Six Months to Go
This is our fourth monthly flag of the impending sequestration: if Congress and the President can’t agree on $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over the coming decade, whack: automatic cuts begin January 2. Half that sum – about $600 billion – would come from national-security accounts.
The story line remains the same: the GOP …
