There was a time when a $200+ billion reduction in the federal budget deficit would have been big news and hailed as a singular achievement worthy of either fiscal sainthood or a dance-on-the-table party...or both.
Yet yesterday's Congressional Budget Office report showing that the fiscal 2013 federal deficit will be $642 billion, $203 billion less than CBO's previous estimate of $845 billion, did not create any spontaneous cannonizations or celebrations. It also didn't change the still-stalemated and crisis-oriented federal budget debate by even a small amount.
The bottomline: It's in almost no one's interest to be happy about the budget news that should have made everyone happier.
Here's why.
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Earlier this week, I noted that the Republican plan to take the debt limit hostage to demand unspecified tax reform at a future date was too ridiculous to be believed. But that battle plan looks like the Invasion of Normandy compared to the latest Keystone Kops scheme the Republicans floated to Politico today: hold the [...]
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According to the Washington Post and Politico, GOP leaders are laying the groundwork to refuse any debt limit increase this year, reneging on debt payments mandated by Congress, shredding the full faith and credit of the American government, thereby plunging the global economy into the abyss, unless Washington … does some sort of unspecified revenue-neutral [...]
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MORNING MESSAGE: Sequester Cuts Are Dumb, Education Cuts Are Dumber OurFuture.org’s Jeff Bryant: “Unfortunately, cuts to essential funds for educating our children aren’t limited to the dreaded sequester. The assault on spending is pervasive in all aspects of education budgeting at every level of government. Even worse, spending cuts are aimed at the very areas [...]
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Republicans are already plotting their next opportunity to take our nation hostage. At his weekly press conference, John Boehner said the GOP will refuse to raise the debt ceiling in May, if the president doesn't agree to more spending cuts. President Obama already agreed to cuts in the fiscal cliff deal totaling $1.5 trillion over the next decade. And the sequester will cut an additional $1.2 trillion over that same period. But, that's not enough for Republicans.
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MORNING MESSAGE: 2014 – The Democrats’ Dilemma OurFuture.org’s Robert Borosage: “Voters tend to blame the party in power – the president’s party – for the economy. And the 2014 economy is likely to be lousy. Americans are struggling with falling wages and growing insecurity. More than 20 million people are still in need of full-time [...]
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Conservatives are using the sequester as leverage in their latest attempt to hold our economy and government hostage. All in all, nine percent of non-defense programs and 13 percent of defense programs will be cut in a seven-month time span. Aside from the million jobs lost, threat of a double-dip recession, and risk to our national security, the automatic cuts are simply egregious to human needs.
But what Congress created, it can end. On March 20, join CAF, more than 60 national organizations, and the AFL-CIO for a national day of actions at congressional offices and communities to ask Congress to cancel the sequester. Here at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF), we have one simple message for Congress: “Cancel the Sequester!”
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More than 20 members of Congress responded to over 300,000 American voices calling for passage of legislation that would repeal of the federal budget sequester. The bill, H.R. 900, is direct and can be summed up in one sentence: Cancel the sequester. Passing the bill will be “a simple solution to a knotty problem” said [...]
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Gimme an "S"! Gimme an "E"! Gimme a "Q"! Gimme a "U"! Gimme an "S, T, E, R"! What's that spell? That depends. If you're almost everyone else, the sequester spells an onslaught of unnecessary, painful, and "just plain dumb" spending cuts. If you're one of the GOP's "Sequester Cheerleaders," it spells sweet, sweet, victory.
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The smackdown that President Obama delivered today to people who assert that he and others are exaggerating the impact of the sequestration for dramatic effect is worth publishing in full: Q: What do you say to the people like Mayor Bloomberg — who is no critic of yours in general; he endorsed you — who [...]
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