Posted on 10/31/2013 5:13:00 PM PDT by SkyPilot
In rare political remarks since becoming president of Purdue University, former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels has voiced sharp disagreement with many fellow Republicans over whether the automatic spending cuts known as sequestration should continue.
Daniels, once director of the Office of Management and Budget under George W. Bush, dubbed sequestration a "bad idea" during a press breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.
In so doing, the 64-year-old Daniels put himself on the opposite side of such national conservative leaders as Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, who recently told Newsmax "in the short term, it's important to maintain sequestration."
"The sequester is a bad idea," Daniels told Newsmax during the breakfast. "When the president suggested it — and I assume it was his idea — his purpose was to frighten people."
Obama probably never thought the automatic cuts would go into effect, Daniels said.
As to his own view that "the sequester is the wrong way to do business," the Hoosier Republican explained that "it penalizes worthy programs as well as bad programs and it doesn't go to the real root of the problem — namely entitlements."
Noting that the sequester is cutting only discretionary spending and not entitlements, Daniels predicted that unless entitlements were dealt with, "there will be a runaway growth of autopilot spending and it will devour us. Soon, every [agency] from the FBI to the Park Service will have to run on borrowed money.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
Wow. Someone actually speaking the truth about Sequestration and Entitlements for a change.
That's OK - tomorrow Sen "Weasel" McConnell will tell us all how great he is for "preserving" the gutting of our military while failing to lift a finger about the real causes of our debt and deficit (Entitlements).
Well, Obamacare is the new, bankrupting entitlement, and Ted Cruz spoke the truth about it. But, I like Daniels. I wish he would run.
I am convinced ObamaCare was concocted by Satan himself.
But Sequestration cuts in all the wrong places, doesn't do a single thing about Entitlements, and is destroying our military (you know....those people in uniform that Conservatives used to care about).
This editorial says it all:
The $80 billion in across-the-board cuts in discretionary spending this year (increasing to $109 billion come January and adding up to $1.2 trillion through 2021) are exactly what the economy doesn’t need right now. In August, the Congressional Budget Office said that, by canceling sequestration for the next 14 months, lawmakers could add 1 million jobs and increase gross domestic product by 0.7 percent. There can be little doubt that sequestration is doing more harm than good to the economy.....More important, the pressures of an aging population, rising health-care costs and new federal subsidies for health insurance will cause mandatory spending to increase as a percentage of GDP after 2018.
And that brings up another problem with sequestration: Congress is looking for cutbacks in all the wrong places. Focusing on 5 percent of the economy means little at a time when health-care and retirement programs are mushrooming.
That has to change. Congress has several years to figure out how to tackle the real problem. For now, though, draining $109 billion from the economy is akin to using leeches. Which was about as effective for treating fevers in 19th century Europe as sequestration is for speeding economic growth today.
Correct. Sequestration is not the best idea, but it is the 2nd best if dems control the Senate and SpiteHouse.
Correct. Sequestration is not the best idea, but it is the 2nd best if dems control the Senate and SpiteHouse.
/johnny
Sequestration may not be the best tool, but it has a couple of great things going for it, if the pubbies can keep the noise going.
First, it belongs to Zero and the 0bamunists. Their idea, start to finish.
Second, it cuts spending. We are so screwed right now that ANY spending cut is a good one.
It is the only way to keep spending down….there is a lot of waste in the DOD….
Another RINO squish.
Anything that cuts government is a good tool. Anything.
I think the Sequester is the best we can expect of congress because it forces things to a breaking point sooner. Some of these guys like Daniels assume that we must try to keep everything all nice and polite and well funded. The Sequester is in a way beautiful in that it has set the government on a course to consume itself. I’m sorry if it causes pain but people don’t get the message any other way it seems. Full steam ahead to the demise of the nanny state and the policing the world state.
Why on earth would the Democrats EVER agree to cuts in the socialist welfare state, when that is the very heart of the party’s scheme to buy the votes of its parasitic moocher base?
The only realistic way out of the fiscal mess is hold the line on spending growth while goosing economic growth via tax cuts and regulatory pullback.
True.
Mitch Daniels creates a false choice between sequestration (discretionary spending discipline) and entitlement reform. Sequestration was Obama’s idea, it was a scare tactic, his bluff was called, and we are all still here to tell the tale. It was a political downer for Obama, didn’t hurt the country or the Republicans in any real way, and has actually kinda sorta cut some spending. Mitch Daniels is part of the problem, still.
Noting that the sequester is cutting only discretionary spending and not entitlements, Daniels predicted that unless entitlements were dealt with, "there will be a runaway growth of autopilot spending and it will devour us. Soon, every [agency] from the FBI to the Park Service will have to run on borrowed money.
That would be nice, but you are misinformed.
Sequestration did and is harming the military.
Service Chiefs Warn of Sequester's 'Insidious' Effects
Thousands of doctors and nurses have quit the DoD in disgust. These are the same people who treat our combat wounded and people in uniform. Air Force combat wings are non-mission ready and cannot even perform needed maintenance. Only 2 Army Combat brigades (out of 40) are even trained and ready should a crisis arrive. Navy ships are being mothballed because we cannot perform depot repairs. Thousands of Marines will be tossed out of the service next year.
I could go on and on....but you have Google at your fingertips. Look it up.
From Merely Stupid to Dangerous: The Sequester’s Effects on National and Economic Security
When the next war explodes (and it will) we will be grossly unprepared, and this time the Republicans will get to share in the "credit" for the debacle.
Remember that I told you first.
Excellent observation on your part (as usual).
There really isn't any incentive, and that is why the Sequestration "formula" that the Republicans agreed to with the Budget Control Act of 2011 was so incredibly short sighted and stupid.
Sequestration EXEMPTS give away Entitlements, yet it punishes Defense (which is now only 17% of all Federal spending and shrinking) with 50% of all Sequestration cuts.
Ronald Reagan is spinning in his grave. These "Republicans" should be ashamed of themselves.
This interview is from yesterday. General Gen. Ray Odierno is blunt, and to the point.
Interview: US Army Chief Says Budget Cuts Are Hurting Force
Q. What is the real impact of past and future budget cuts on the force? Why are you so alarmed? And what is the way out of it?
A. Well, it is a bunch of cumulative things that have occurred: continuing resolutions [CRs], which we submit budgets, the House Armed Service Committee passed these budgets, but since we have not gotten a total governmental budget, we do not execute them, so we go to a CR. So it is not in line with how we think we should spend money in order to keep our force up. Then you have a shutdown. Then on top of that, you have sequestration, where we have a bunch of very heavy cuts that we have to take.
So let’s forget about the number on sequestration. It is about the up-front cuts in sequestration that does not allow you to properly manage sequestration where you can sustain readiness, you can sustain modernization, as you reduce end strength. So what we are being forced to do is cut readiness, cut modernization, because we cannot cut end strength fast enough. Because it becomes too expensive to cut it, and you do not get any savings if you cut it very fast because you have to pay benefits.
Q. So what is the net impact from a readiness standpoint?
A. So let me put it in very simple terms. A brigade [of soldiers is] not going to the National Training Center. They do not have dollars to train at their home station. So we still have brigades, but if we ask them to go, they are not going to be trained properly. So what does that mean? That means when they go, it is going to take them longer to do it. They might have more casualties. So to me, that is unacceptable. And so the problem with us is, we are realistic about the future. What I am telling you is we have to deploy people in the future. They are not going to be ready right now. That is a problem for me.
Q. What is it going to take to drive this point home? Is this a credibility issue for the service chiefs and the defense leadership?
A. The bottom line is everybody has got to realize between now and 2019, we have significant risk because we will not get rebalanced until then. And so that is a six-year period where we are going to be unbalanced. And what I worry about is this world we live in is incredibly uncertain. I do not know what is going to happen. There are lots of possibilities out there.
I certainly hope we do not have to deploy soldiers, but my job is to make sure we are ready to deploy them. And if we have to do it in the next six years, we have significant problems, because I think they will not be trained or equipped the way we think they should be as American soldiers to do their job.
Q. There has been a sense that the Pentagon has been waiting for Congress to come and ride to the rescue with more money, sort of forestalling the hard decisions. Was it a mistake to wait as long as you did?
A. So, you know, if we get a budget, we can plan towards that budget and we have planned towards these budgets. So we have a sequestration budget. We have planned for that. We know what it means. We know what a ’15 to ’19 budget would look like. So we are prepared to execute that. Again, the bottom line is sequestration was a tool that was supposed to force compromise in Congress. It was not a tool developed to properly manage the downsizing of the Department of Defense or the Army. And that is the problem. The tool was not right.
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