Sequester

[eeven73]

Well, if Barack is able to (fully) put this noose around the neck of the Republicans I gotta give him big time credit as a politician.

If he is able to get more revenue out of this negotiation the Rep's would seem to be DOA in 14 midterm.

[goofyboy]

First: @davidhauptmann: So Obama was for the sequester before he was against it?

Second: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2013/01/28/how-president-obama-lost-his-shirt-to-john-boehner/

[eeven73]

heres hoping this^^^ is correct

[Okie Boarder]

This whole thing is a joke. They're acting like this is a major crisis in order to gain support for whichever side of the argument they are on. The sequester only slows growth, it isn't cuts. The amount by which it slows growth is a drop in the bucket. (~2%). This whole thing would be like a husband and wife arguing over next year's budget and disagreeing whether they want to increase their spending by $35 a week (for a $65,000 budget), and threatening each other with divorce over the whole thing.

I say, let the sequester "cuts" go through. Following those cuts, keep cutting until we get to a Constitutionally limited government, then resume from there.

[jgriffith]

I wonder if the furloughs will affect members of Congress or high ranking members of the executive, something tells me no

[goofyboy]

By the way, Obama said in October / November 2011 (i believe) that he would VETO any legislation that attempted to stop the Sesquester.

[HeadRush]

Okie Boarder--

This is NO joke. My wife, myself and my son all work on a military base, and I can tell you first hand this is not just a drop in the bucket.

The cuts are not just for the politicians.

So until you expeirence it.......

[Okie Boarder]

It is $85B in reduction of future spending out of $3T...about 2%. You're saying that we can't afford to not spend that extra money?

I have experienced cuts that affected me personally of a much higher percentage of my income. I've also had to cut my personal budget by much higher percentages to make sure I was staying in the black and achieving financial goals.

[HeadRush]

It's a $460B cut in Defense.

YOU making a meagar cut in your budget does not affect the people that work for and support the military! This does. I am seeing it already.

[Nor*Cal]

[Okie Boarder]

Nor*Cal, I was thinking they said 10 years.

The chart pretty much sums it up. No matter how you slice it, there is not a cut. It is less of an increase in spending with the sequester.

[jgriffith]

[Nor*Cal]

But there are real lives affected by these decisions. The question is how do we transition out of a state of perpetual war in a manner that eases military-related jobs into the private sector.

Obviously there is a need for some real thought here but my bet is both parties will maneuver to see who can get stuck with the responsibility of any impacts from whatever action takes place.

Anyone taking odds on another patchwork fix to give them a few more months?

[goofyboy]

Government is too damn big, and that includes the military. At the rate we have been growing, I don't think there is an easier way to get cuts made. At least this is across the board. All groups get a cut. And here's the thing, there is someone in each group saying they shouldn't be cut.

[eeven73]

There certainly is alot of politics being played with "First Responders", "Defense" and the like. Hard for me to extrapolate this, "decrease in the increase", into a end of the world scenario being laid out by POTUS

[Okie Boarder]

Of course it affects real people, but so does spending ourselves into trillions and trillions in debt. It is going to be painful, but it needs to be cut back. If drastic cuts aren't made, it won't be long and cuts will happen on their own with an entire collapse. Those would be even more painful.

[Faust]

If you want a real big headache, start reading about who 'we' owe all this debt to....

I'll give you a hint, it isn't China

[Okie Boarder]

[buckthis]

China is the foreign country that we owe the most money to, probably about 15%, so most of the money, over 50%, is owed to ourselves(not really a big deal) if we owe it to ourselves(not leaving the country) then there is no collapse of the economy. In a strong economy 2% would not be that big of a deal, but we are not in a strong economy and 2% could easily put us back in recession(if we are not already there).

[Okie Boarder]

When we are spending $5.2 million of the military budget studying goldfish, I think there are plenty of areas cuts can be made.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/02/rand-pauls-fishin-for-5m-in-waste-87932.html

[Okie Boarder]

Obama has spoken to state Governors to get them on his side.



http://news.yahoo.com/white-house-warns-states-looming-pain-march-1-015946018--business.html



I'd love to see someone answer these questions...



1. Explain to me exactly how the sequester is a cut?

2. Explain to me exactly how people are going to lose jobs by this going through?

[senorbueno]

[eich82]

[senorbueno]

[Okie Boarder]

The way I understand it, the programs that were scheduled to have an increase in funding will have a 2% less increase, not a decrease.

If you can't maintain the same jobs as you are maintaining now with a smaller increase than originally planned, you're doing it all wrong.

[senorbueno]

Okie Boarder, if only it were that simple. You must not know anything about manufacturing/engineering things on a large scale.

Let's say company A wins a contract to make a 10,000 widgets for the government over the next several years. This widget is a complicated piece of machinery that will require state of the art materials and state of the art manufacturing methods, however since so many are ordered, the end cost per unit is some reasonable agreed upon amount due to economies of scale.

The lead time on these materials and to ramp up production can be several months to a few years. So company A begins securing the raw materials, manufacturing devices and machines, and training employees to build components of said widget.

Here comes the "non cut" that you speak of. All of a sudden, all of the components of the widget that are already manufactured are now useless, plus now the company has to figure out what to do with all of the material and machinery and manpower that they were originally gearing up for. This brings the cost per unit up dramatically.

If Company A did not hire the extra people and secure the materials for the production, they would have never been able to come close to meet their contractual obligations.

You take every issue and make it as black and white as you possibly can. That makes the ideas and decisions you see as very easy and logical. Unfortunately, we live in a world of grey, where these types of decisions may or may not have a right or wrong answer, and there's really no way of telling the outcome until a decision is made and everything plays out.

[Okie Boarder]

When they won the contract, they won at at $X per unit. Let's say it was $10 per unit. Over the life of the contract they will be paid $10 a unit to produce them. The government was planning to increase their budget by 7% this year, but the contract was already paid in the base budget prior to the increase. Even if you didn't increase the budget, the contract would still be paid...that's how contracts work. The sequester and all these other ideas for cuts aren't cuts, they are simply less of an increase in the upcoming budgets. If you aren't going to increase a budget by quite as much, how will you lose jobs? You won't, plain and simple. You may not add jobs, but you won't take them away. You may not sign any new contracts, or less new contracts, but you won't cancel any existing contracts. You're buying into the rhetoric and as long as you do, they have control of you, your money and eventually your rights.

[buckthis]

Let the sequestering begin!

[Faust]

Soooo... it happened right?

[buckthis]

yes, but now they are saying its going to take three months for the cuts to take place.

[goofyboy]

And in the mean time, we can watch them lose it over the fact that the government will be shutting down in May (I think), unless another continuing resolution is passed or something like that.

[tball]

I have DoD civilian employees that work for me. The overall dollar amount is fairly insignificant in the long run, as several have noted. The damaging part is that they take effect in the current year. Explaining fiscal rules (FY vs CY) is too tough in a small space, so I'll just sum it up by saying that if you knew your income was going to be different in a year, you would adjust your life accordingly. We have to make-up all FY13 cuts (Oct-Sep) in the last seven months of the FY13. FY14 won't be a big deal because we'll adjust contracts, training plans, support needs, travel (even to Afghanistan) to meet resources. We haven't done that in 13, and we haven't had the authority to alter contracts, manning, etc to accommodate the pending cuts until they showed up last week. The rest of FY13 will hurt.

[Nor*Cal]

Some departments need deeper cuts than others...

example 1: http://reason.com/blog/2013/03/04/the-dhss-latest-toy-we-have-gunports-so

[get_sum]

[RampageWake]