Sequester: A Big Word for "Not Making Things Worse"

ATR ^ | 2011-11-22 | Mattie Duppler Corrao

[92nina]

...In fact, the debt limit deal passed in August secured victory for taxpayers in any scenario - without a committee plan, a budget sequestration will go into effect, axing $1.2 trillion from federal spending. Taxpayers in favor of smaller government win either way.

Unlike a detailed committee proposal, the sequestration is an across-the-board cut for next year’s spending levels. The August debt deal requires half of the sequestration to fall on the defense side (the largest discretionary allocation by a long shot; defense spending makes up more than half of the funds appropriated each year) and half to come from domestic discretionary spending. OMB will be responsible for reporting to Congress what the spending levels will be and lawmakers will be able to flesh out where cuts will fall from there.

Most of the mandatory spending is exempt from sequestration, as is supplemental spending that has been used to side step budgetary restraints (supplementals are the common vehicle for war funding as well). The sequester can touch Medicare spending, but only cut about one-half of one percent of its expected costs over the next ten years.

This means supporters of bigger government and domestic spending are going to be feeling a very tight squeeze. CBO estimates that defense spending will amount to $8 trillion over the next decade. Non-defense discretionary spending will amount to $5.9 in that same period. That $600 billion in cuts from either of these categories would be deemed “draconian” is laughable, but it is obvious that the cuts will weigh much more heavily on the non-defense side of the ledger.

What’s more, the CBO projection does not include the security spending that happens outside of Pentagon budgets which will add over $200 billion in spending over the next ten years...

Read more: http://www.atr.org/sequester-big-word-making-things-worse-a6607#ixzz1f233Zyd2

[92nina]

But can the sequester hold?

Take this article and others I found to the fight to the Libs on their own turf; put the Left on the defensive at Digg and at Reddit and in Stumbleupon and Delicious

[LibLieSlayer]

“By next year” they mean 2013.

LLS

[92nina]

It’s true sadly.

[LibLieSlayer]

IF they had compromised on anything... the tax hikes would be retroactive to day before yesterday.

LLS

[arthurus]

If it were 1.2 trillion in one year it would mean something. 1.2 trillion over ten years out of projected 40 trillion is nothing at all and will be more than made up by later appropriations. There is no such thing as a 10 year budget. Future congresses are not bound by the present congress. There is no serious cutting before the collapse unless they cut OUT many whole programs and entities, like Social Security and Medicaid and ALL welfare type programs, the EPA, etc. Cutting each agency’s budget, even drastically, will be of NO effect in the barely more than short run if the agencies and programs are not totally eliminated.