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GOLDMAN: Hide Your Kids, The Sequester Is Coming Joe WeisenthalJan. 15, 2013, 5:15 AM Goldman's Alec Phillips writes in a note that the automatic spending cuts required by the so-called "Sequester" (the spending caps imposed by the 2011 debt ceiling deal) are now a matter of "when" and not "if." He examines the sequester as part of the broader fiscal triple threat that we're seeing right now: Debt ceiling + ongoing budget resolution + sequester. While the debt ceiling has the potential to do the most damage, from a probabilistic standpoint (because the debt ceiling is unlikely to be breached)...

It is looking more and more like Washington politicians are once again going to kick the can down the road to show any level of fiscal responsibility by passing another short-term solution to avert the so-called fiscal cliff. This is the economic disaster which is supposedly going to hit the nation if tax rates are allowed to return to the levels in place during the Clinton era (when the economy was pretty good) and federal spending levels are forced to be cut by approximately 3% per year over the next decade. That second part of the equation was part of...

At Monday's third presidential debate, President Obama pointedly promised that sequestered budget cuts that will affect defense spending "will not happen." OBAMA: First of all, the sequester is not something that I've proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed. It will not happen. [emphasis added] The next morning, in an off-the-record interview with the editors of the Des Moines Register, President Obama reversed course, taking credit for a sequester that he anticipates will be "in place.": OBAMA: "So when you combine the Bush tax cuts expiring, the sequester in place, the commitment of both myself and my opponent --...

Bob Woodward says President Barack Obama got some of his facts wrong on sequester at Monday night’s debate. Woodward’s book, “The Price of Politics,” has been the go-to fact check source for the president’s answer, in which he claimed the idea of using deep, automatic, across-the-board domestic and defense spending cuts to force Congress to address the nation’s burgeoning federal deficit originated from Congress, not from the White House. “What the president said is not correct,” Woodward told POLITICO Tuesday. “He’s mistaken. And it’s refuted by the people who work for him.” Woodward, a Washington Post journalist who was a...

House to vote on requiring Obama to find alternative to sequester cutsBy Jeremy Herb - 09/08/12 10:43 AM ET The House will vote next week on legislation that would require President Obama to submit a plan to replace the sequestration cuts ahead of the November election. The legislation would also serve as a vehicle to repeal the sequester in 2013, provided that the House-passed sequestration reconciliation plan or similar legislation were to become law, which is unlikely to occur before November. The “National Security and Job Protection Act,” sponsored by Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), was a new measure included on...

A Russian nuclear-powered attack submarine armed with long-range cruise missiles operated undetected in the Gulf of Mexico for several weeks and its travel in strategic U.S. waters was only confirmed after it left the region, the Washington Free Beacon has learned. It is only the second time since 2009 that a Russian attack submarine has patrolled so close to U.S. shores. The stealth underwater incursion in the Gulf took place at the same time Russian strategic bombers made incursions into restricted U.S. airspace near Alaska and California in June and July, and highlights a growing military assertiveness by Moscow. The...

Automatic across-the-board cuts to the budget set for Jan. 2 will cost the United States 1 million jobs, according to a new study released Thursday by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC).The job-loss projection comes from cuts to defense and non-defense spending. The BPC predicts gross domestic product will decline by 0.5 percent if the full $109 billion defense and non-defense sequester goes through. The base defense and intelligence budget will be cut by $55 billion or 15 percent on Jan. 2, when politically sensitive war funding is stripped from the equation, the group said. It warned of a massive disruption...