Posted on 03/01/2013 8:14:52 AM PST by Sub-Driver
Sequestration: White House summit begins By: Jake Sherman March 1, 2013 10:49 AM EST
The nation’s top four lawmakers arrived at the White House Friday morning, pessimistic they will be able to resolve the impasse over $85 billion in across-the-board budget cuts that begin at midnight.
The meeting began at 10:18 — just a smidge more than 12 hours before the sequester was scheduled to begin.
This fiscal dilemma has played out differently from the previous ones in the sense that the chief players — Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) — have not met at all throughout it. There have been virtually no negotiations between the White House and Congress, as both sides have fiercely clung to their starting points —Obama has insisted that a solution include a balance of spending cuts and new revenues, while Boehner has dismissed any tax hikes out of hand.
And with the sequester set to hit at 11:59 pm. on Friday night, not much is expected to happen at the White House meeting Friday morning. Republicans even said as much before the meeting happened.
The mood on this gray Friday was encapsulated before the meeting by Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican leader of the Senate.
“There will be no last-minute, back-room deal and absolutely no agreement to increase taxes,” McConnell said in a statement, adding that he was “happy” to discuss other options to reduce spending.
That’s precisely where the disagreement lies. Boehner and McConnell are opposed to Obama’s plan to close what the president describes as tax loopholes to help offset the cuts, which will disproportionally hit the Pentagon and other military spending. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) favor raising more revenue to blunt the cuts.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
The Senate and House pass a single budget.
Obama should be impeached!!! What a low life, egotistical, destructive, hatefull, maniac!!! Dumb Americans do not realize Obama and his Black racist wife Michelle hate America and all she stands for!!! End of story!!!
The sequester will be the happiest day of my life because that is the first time that they have EVER cut government EVER.do you all understand the significance of that? I toast to the sequester!
Bring on the sequester . Tell Boner and the GOP NOT to cave let the cuts happen
No, baby step zero is when the Senate and the House each pass a separate budget. Then they get together to negotiate differences. since the House has already done that, it's time for the democRat controlled Senate to do their part.
Bubble, bubble, toil and .......
Boehner and McConnell are opposed to Obama’s plan to close what the president describes as tax loopholes to help offset the cuts, which will disproportionally hit the Pentagon and other military spending.
What Tax Loopholes are they talking about and are we for them?
Obama should be impeached!!! What a low life, egotistical, destructive, hatefull, maniac!!! Dumb Americans do not realize Obama and his Black racist wife Michelle hate America and all she stands for!!! End of story!!!
That’s it in a nutshell. Adding on his hateful, morally depraved, mobsta punks in his administration as well.
I think their summit (LOL) is over ,Obama must be placing his props so he can stand in front of them and blah blah blah at us
The republicans have nothing to lose and everything to gain by allowing the sequester to happen. If they cave, it is the final piece of evidence to utterly convince me that they are simply a part of the same machine to which the democrats belong, and there is probably a lot of truth to this video. Time will tell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mII9NZ8MMVM
The principles and ideas underlying America's Constitutional limits on grants of power to elected officials led to individual freedom, opportunity, creativity, wealth creation, and a refuge for oppressed persons from all over the world.
The "liberal" movement which began in the late 1800's, now self-described as the "progressive" movement has brought America's citizens and their economy to this point.
So-called "progressives," in their arrogant and overwhelming desire for accumulation of power for themselves, readily acknowledge the taxing power as a useful tool for restraining motivation toward what they deem to be undesirable behavior.
On the other hand, they deny the certain fact that "taking," or taxing productive citizens also discourages and restrains opportunity and motivation toward productivity, wealth creation, and saving.
Democrats, under Obama, now have endangered the liberty of millions yet unborn with their illogical arguments on behalf of "taking" and "redistributing" the earnings of hard-working Americans. They claim they are "taking care" of those who elected them. Their "taking care" amounts to enslaving every citizen, born and unborn, for generations to come.
Their claims would fall on deaf ears, if most citizens understood their Constitution's limits on the powers of government. Here what some of the Founders said about the policies of today's "progressive" Democrats.
"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39
"I deem [this one of] the essential principles of our government and consequently [one] which ought to shape its administration:... The honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801. ME 3:322
"I sincerely believe... that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:23
"[With the decline of society] begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia [war of all against all], which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:40
"Is it now high time for the people of this country to explicitly declare whether they will be free men or slaves. It is an important question which ought to be decided. It concerns more than anything in this life. The salvation of our souls is interested in this event. For wherever tyranny is established, immorality of every kind comes in like a torrent, it is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice.” - Samuel Adams
And:
“The utopian schemes of leveling and a community of goods, are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the crown. These ideas are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government unconstitutional.” - Samuel Adams
“What Tax Loopholes are they talking about and are we for them?”
Where be all dat transparency?
My bet is that they’ll cave. Not a spine in any GOPe.
We just got done with our taxes and damned if we could find any friggin’ “loop holes”. The only hole we’re gonna see is the HUGE one in our wallet. YIKES! That’ll teach me to retire.
Leftwing media clowns & politicians think they can sell a pig in a poke by changing around a few words.
Its called raising taxes.
“What Tax Loopholes are they talking about and are we for them?”
It seems to me that one of the so-called “tax loopholes” that was being discussed was the mortgage interest tax credit.
I don’t believe that I, personally, am not in favor of any further tax code gerry-mandering. If Congress would like to get rid of the tax code loopholes, they should get rid of them ALL, then! Follow that up by collecting a flat tax from everyone, or something of that nature—or maybe a Fair tax (and disband the IRS). :-)
Deroy Murdock of the National Review made an astute observation in his article published today.
If Obama was really interested in governing and is really concerned for the good of the country, he should know what to cut and what to preserve without any of the so called pain he keeps talking about.
Instead, he is simply interested in playing politics and demonizing Republicans.
This is for all low information voters ....
Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Tom Price (R., Ga.) co-authored the Decrease Spending Now Act. It would shift to debt relief a whopping $45 billion in tax revenues now stalled in dormant federal accounts.
“Hundreds of billions of dollars are borrowed and then left unspent because Congress routinely bites off more than it can chew,” Rubio stated. Added Price: “Leaving billions of taxpayer dollars to gather dust in federal coffers only encourages fiscal irresponsibility. By rescinding this unspent and unobligated money — funds that the government clearly can do without — we can contribute to the larger goal of breaking the government’s habit of borrowing and spending money we cannot afford.”
Senator Rand Paul would cut $85 billion annually by not replacing departed federal employees ($6.5 billion in savings), bringing the $128,226 in average yearly federal civilian compensation closer to the private sector’s $64,560 (reducing $32 billion), curtailing federal travel by 25 percent ($2.25 billion), limiting Pentagon research to military applications ($6 billion), requiring competitive bids on government contracts and paying market wages on federal projects ($19 billion), and halving foreign aid ($20 billion).
The Public Interest Research Group and the National Taxpayers Union jointly identified $1 trillion in ten-year savings through 56 budget cuts that liberals and conservatives should love. These range from killing a $10 million biodiesel-education grant to a $160 billion modernization of federal computer systems. The $77 billion Crop Insurance program should be uprooted. The feds own some 55,500 buildings that are “not utilized or underutilized.” Sell them. Even giving them away would save taxpayers $17 billion in maintenance expenses — on empty buildings!
PIRG and NTU urge Medicare to calibrate excessive labor and office-space outlays with the actual prices that prevail in lower-cost communities. Savings: $47.6 billion.
Rather than spend $179,750 per hour to fly Air Force One from rally to rally to demonize Republicans, Obama should sit still long enough to send Congress a budget request. The federal Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 mandates that the president’s spending plan reach Capitol Hill by the first Monday of February. Obama’s last two budgets arrived late, and this year’s is AWOL. Before Obama barks at Republicans yet again, he should start doing his job.
Obama keeps harping about teachers, police, firefighters not being paid, airplane delays, and the hollowing of our defense when there is so much FAT that can be cut.
Preach it!
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