10 replies to this topic

[colion]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bob-woodward-obamas-sequester-deal-changer/2013/02/22/c0b65b5e-7ce1-11e2-9a75-dab0201670da_print.html


Obama's sequester deal-changer

By Bob Woodward, Published: February 22

Bob Woodward (woodwardb@washpost.com) is an associate editor of The Post. His latest book is "The Price of Politics." Evelyn M. Duffy contributed to this column. Misunderstanding, misstatements and all the classic contortions of partisan message management surround the sequester, the term for the $85 billion in ugly and largely irrational federal spending cuts set by law to begin Friday.

What is the non-budget wonk to make of this? Who is responsible? What really happened?

The finger-pointing began during the third presidential debatelast fall, on Oct. 22, when President Obama blamed Congress. "The sequester is not something that I've proposed," Obama said. "It is something that Congress has proposed."

The White House chief of staff at the time, Jack Lew, who had been budget director during the negotiations that set up the sequester in 2011, backed up the president two days later.

"There was an insistence on the part of Republicans in Congressfor there to be some automatic trigger," Lew said while campaigning in Florida. It "was very much rooted in the Republican congressional insistence that there be an automatic measure."

The president and Lew had this wrong. My extensive reporting for my book "The Price of Politics" shows that the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors — probably the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government.

Obama personally approved of the plan for Lew and Nabors to propose the sequester to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). They did so at 2:30 p.m. July 27, 2011, according to interviews with two senior White House aides who were directly involved.

Nabors has told others that they checked with the president before going to see Reid. A mandatory sequester was the only action-forcing mechanism they could devise. Nabors has said, "We didn't actually think it would be that hard to convince them" — Reid and the Republicans — to adopt the sequester. "It really was the only thing we had. There was not a lot of other options left on the table."

A majority of Republicans did vote for the Budget Control Act that summer, which included the sequester. Key Republican staffers said they didn't even initially know what a sequester was — because the concept stemmed from the budget wars of the 1980s, when they were not in government.

At the Feb. 13 Senate Finance Committee hearingon Lew's nomination to become Treasury secretary, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) asked Lew about the account in my book: "Woodward credits you with originating the plan for sequestration. Was he right or wrong?"

"It's a little more complicated than that," Lew responded, "and even in his account, it was a little more complicated than that. We were in a negotiation where the failure would have meant the default of the government of the United States."

"Did you make the suggestion?" Burr asked.

"Well, what I did was said that with all other options closed, we needed to look for an option where we could agree on how to resolve our differences. And we went back to the 1984 plan that Senator [Phil] Gramm and Senator [Warren] Rudman worked on and said that that would be a basis for having a consequence that would be so unacceptable to everyone that we would be able to get action."

In other words, yes.

But then Burr asked about the president's statement during the presidential debate, that the Republicans originated it.

Lew, being a good lawyer and a loyal presidential adviser, then shifted to denial mode: "Senator, the demand for an enforcement mechanism was not something that the administration was pushing at that moment."

That statement was not accurate.

On Tuesday, Obama appeared at the White House with a group of police officers and firefighters to denounce the sequester as a "meat-cleaver approach" that would jeopardize military readiness and investments in education, energy and readiness. He also said it would cost jobs. But, the president said, the substitute would have to include new revenue through tax reform.

At noon that same day, White House press secretary Jay Carney shifted position and accepted sequester paternity.

"The sequester was something that was discussed," Carney said. Walking back the earlier statements, he added carefully, "and as has been reported, it was an idea that the White House put forward."

This was an acknowledgment that the president and Lew had been wrong.

Why does this matter?

First, months of White House dissembling further eroded any semblance of trust between Obama and congressional Republicans. (The Republicans are by no means blameless and have had their own episodes of denial and bald-faced message management.)

Second, Lew testified during his confirmation hearing that the Republicans would not go along with new revenue in the portion of the deficit-reduction plan that became the sequester. Reinforcing Lew's point, a senior White House official said Friday, "The sequester was an option we were forced to take because the Republicans would not do tax increases."

In fact, the final deal reached between Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in 2011 included an agreement that there would be no tax increases in the sequester in exchange for what the president was insisting on: an agreement that the nation's debt ceiling would be increased for 18 months, so Obama would not have to go through another such negotiation in 2012, when he was running for reelection.

So when the president asks that a substitute for the sequester include not just spending cuts but also new revenue, he is moving the goal posts. His call for a balanced approach is reasonable, and he makes a strong case that those in the top income brackets could and should pay more. But that was not the deal he made.

Read more from PostOpinions: Bob Woodward: Time for our leaders to delegate on the budget Robert J. Samuelson: The lowdown on Lew Jennifer Rubin: Jack Lew's truth problem Eugene Robinson: The sequester madness

[Rogerdodger]

GOVERNMENT REPORTS: BUDGET CUTS ALREADY CAUSING AIRPORT DELAYS...

Or Are They?

Lots of green nationwide: http://www.fly.faa.g...lyfaa/usmap.jsp


CRISIS! CRISIS! CRISIS!

You can only cry WOLF! so many times until they quit listening.

Audit of Pentagon Spending Finds $70 Billion in Waste - NYTimes

Pentagon Audit Finds $15 Billion in Iraq Funds Unaccounted For ...

The Pentagon Flunks Another Audit
(AND THAT'S JUST THE PENGAGON)

Edited by Rogerdodger, 04 March 2013 - 01:35 PM.

[salsabob]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bob-woodward-obamas-sequester-deal-changer/2013/02/22/c0b65b5e-7ce1-11e2-9a75-dab0201670da_print.html


Obama's sequester deal-changer

By Bob Woodward, Published: February 22

Bob Woodward (woodwardb@washpost.com) is an associate editor of The Post. His latest book is "The Price of Politics." Evelyn M. Duffy contributed to this column. Misunderstanding, misstatements and all the classic contortions of partisan message management surround the sequester, the term for the $85 billion in ugly and largely irrational federal spending cuts set by law to begin Friday.

What is the non-budget wonk to make of this? Who is responsible? What really happened?

The finger-pointing began during the third presidential debatelast fall, on Oct. 22, when President Obama blamed Congress. "The sequester is not something that I've proposed," Obama said. "It is something that Congress has proposed."

The White House chief of staff at the time, Jack Lew, who had been budget director during the negotiations that set up the sequester in 2011, backed up the president two days later.

"There was an insistence on the part of Republicans in Congressfor there to be some automatic trigger," Lew said while campaigning in Florida. It "was very much rooted in the Republican congressional insistence that there be an automatic measure."

The president and Lew had this wrong. My extensive reporting for my book "The Price of Politics" shows that the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors — probably the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government.

Obama personally approved of the plan for Lew and Nabors to propose the sequester to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). They did so at 2:30 p.m. July 27, 2011, according to interviews with two senior White House aides who were directly involved.

Nabors has told others that they checked with the president before going to see Reid. A mandatory sequester was the only action-forcing mechanism they could devise. Nabors has said, "We didn't actually think it would be that hard to convince them" — Reid and the Republicans — to adopt the sequester. "It really was the only thing we had. There was not a lot of other options left on the table."

A majority of Republicans did vote for the Budget Control Act that summer, which included the sequester. Key Republican staffers said they didn't even initially know what a sequester was — because the concept stemmed from the budget wars of the 1980s, when they were not in government.

At the Feb. 13 Senate Finance Committee hearingon Lew's nomination to become Treasury secretary, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) asked Lew about the account in my book: "Woodward credits you with originating the plan for sequestration. Was he right or wrong?"

"It's a little more complicated than that," Lew responded, "and even in his account, it was a little more complicated than that. We were in a negotiation where the failure would have meant the default of the government of the United States."

"Did you make the suggestion?" Burr asked.

"Well, what I did was said that with all other options closed, we needed to look for an option where we could agree on how to resolve our differences. And we went back to the 1984 plan that Senator [Phil] Gramm and Senator [Warren] Rudman worked on and said that that would be a basis for having a consequence that would be so unacceptable to everyone that we would be able to get action."

In other words, yes.

But then Burr asked about the president's statement during the presidential debate, that the Republicans originated it.

Lew, being a good lawyer and a loyal presidential adviser, then shifted to denial mode: "Senator, the demand for an enforcement mechanism was not something that the administration was pushing at that moment."

That statement was not accurate.

On Tuesday, Obama appeared at the White House with a group of police officers and firefighters to denounce the sequester as a "meat-cleaver approach" that would jeopardize military readiness and investments in education, energy and readiness. He also said it would cost jobs. But, the president said, the substitute would have to include new revenue through tax reform.

At noon that same day, White House press secretary Jay Carney shifted position and accepted sequester paternity.

"The sequester was something that was discussed," Carney said. Walking back the earlier statements, he added carefully, "and as has been reported, it was an idea that the White House put forward."

This was an acknowledgment that the president and Lew had been wrong.

Why does this matter?

First, months of White House dissembling further eroded any semblance of trust between Obama and congressional Republicans. (The Republicans are by no means blameless and have had their own episodes of denial and bald-faced message management.)

Second, Lew testified during his confirmation hearing that the Republicans would not go along with new revenue in the portion of the deficit-reduction plan that became the sequester. Reinforcing Lew's point, a senior White House official said Friday, "The sequester was an option we were forced to take because the Republicans would not do tax increases."

In fact, the final deal reached between Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in 2011 included an agreement that there would be no tax increases in the sequester in exchange for what the president was insisting on: an agreement that the nation's debt ceiling would be increased for 18 months, so Obama would not have to go through another such negotiation in 2012, when he was running for reelection.

So when the president asks that a substitute for the sequester include not just spending cuts but also new revenue, he is moving the goal posts. His call for a balanced approach is reasonable, and he makes a strong case that those in the top income brackets could and should pay more. But that was not the deal he made.

Read more from PostOpinions: Bob Woodward: Time for our leaders to delegate on the budget Robert J. Samuelson: The lowdown on Lew Jennifer Rubin: Jack Lew's truth problem Eugene Robinson: The sequester madness

Sort of like the case of the kidnappers telling the judge that they only killed the kid because the parents paying the ransom used 100 dollar bills instead of 20s.

Sheeple are so gullible to old has-beens, like Woodward, wanting to be in the spotlight.

[voltaire]

This is so lame an argument! The whole point of the mandatory cuts was that ALL agreed. The point was it would ensure that it DID NOT happen. So no one can be blamed. I love this blame being put on Obama. It is Congress that makes the laws and the President that enacts them. Check it out.

[voltaire]

This is so lame an argument!

The whole point of the mandatory cuts was that ALL agreed.

The point was it would ensure that it DID NOT happen.

So no one can be blamed.

I love this blame being put on Obama.

It is Congress that makes the laws and the President that enacts them. Check it out.

Shame on Woodward!

Turning "you will probably regret what you said" into "we are gonna get you" is BAD.

Woodward and Bernstein had a falling out.

WHY?

Because Woodward is a conservative and Berstein a "free thinking" liberal.

Since when has a conservative had a brain.

Not since Adam played fullback for Jerusalem!

NO, conservatives are looked into a dogma, which forbids independent thought.

It's a good thing. It stops new thought creeping in. Thank goodness.

[Rogerdodger]

Des Moines Register, October 2012
POTUS: "So when you combine the tax cuts expiring, the sequester in place, we’re going to be in a position where I believe in the first six months we are going to solve that big piece of business.
It will probably be messy. It won’t be pleasant."

Sequester cuts: White House is open to the rich and closed to the poor
Once, only nobles were granted an audience with the King.

Sequester cuts hit Oklahomans' unemployment benefits
Thousands of jobless workers in Oklahoma receiving federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation will soon see a reduction in their weekly benefits because of sequestration, the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission reported Friday.
The EUC program was set to expire Jan. 2, immediately ending all EUC benefit payments, but then the program was reauthorized as part of the "fiscal cliff" legislation passed by Congress at the very first of the year, Carpenter explained.
Due to sequestration-forced budget cuts, payments of EUC made on or after March 31 must be reduced by 10.7 percent. The OESC is sending notices to the active EUC recipients impacted by these cuts.
EUC was first established in July 2008 to help the long-term unemployed as they continued to look for work. When individuals exhaust regular state unemployment benefits, eligible claimants can then collect EUC benefits for a maximum of 14 weeks.

Unemployment claimants are eligible for up to 26 weeks of regular state unemployment benefits from the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission. When those benefits are exhausted, claimants can receive the extended benefits, called emergency unemployment compensation, for up to 20 weeks and a second round of extended benefits for up to an additional 14 weeks.
A third tier provided up to 13 additional weeks of benefits.

What's a guy to do now? Get a job?

"There's not a single job in this town.
Unless you want to work 40 hours a week."

Edited by Rogerdodger, 17 March 2013 - 09:03 AM.

[Rogerdodger]

"It will probably be messy. It won’t be pleasant."

Sequestration has started it's killing spree:

7 MARINES KILLED IN NEVADA DESERT...

HARRY REID BLAMES 'SEQUESTRATION'...

Drunk drivers among administration's sequestration prison release...
But there seems to be plenty of money for the real important stuff:


Feds Spend $1.5M to Study Fat Lesbians...

Feds Spend $2.7M Studying Why Lesbians Have Higher 'Risk for Hazardous Drinking'...

And in a (kind-of) unrelated story:

$3.8M to 'Decrease Human-Elephant Conflict'...

Edited by Rogerdodger, 19 March 2013 - 04:44 PM.

[Rogerdodger]

Sequester, Government style:
Spend $100 a month on baby food and $10,000 on jewelry.
Now tighten up and not buy the baby any more food.


Feds spend at least $890,000 on fees for empty accounts


If you are a federal worker on furlough this week — or an airline passenger delayed by federal furloughs — you might save your blood pressure, and go read another story.

This one is about all the money the U.S. government spends on nothing.

85,933 ways we are not cutting the budget: When the Obama administration invited federal employees to suggest cost saving measures, thousands of ideas were submitted but only 67 have been chosen.

It is one of the oddest spending habits in Washington: This year, the government will spend at least $890,000 on service fees for bank accounts that are empty. At last count, Uncle Sam has 13,712 such accounts with a balance of zero.
In this time of austerity, the accounts are a reminder of something that makes austerity hard: expensive habits, built into the bureaucracy in times of plenty. The Obama administration has spent the past year trying to close these accounts with only some success.

“If anyone had kept open a bank account with no money, and was getting a charge every month, they would do everything they could to close it,” said Thomas A. Schatz of the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste. But, he said, the government hasn’t shown the same kind of urgency with taxpayers’ money.

“It’s just lack of attention to detail. And poor management,” he said. “And, clearly, the fact that no one gets penalized for paying money to keep the accounts open.”

The money spent on the empty accounts is a tiny fraction of the federal budget. But, in its own way, it is something special: Washington’s perfect waste, a rare specimen of cost untainted by any reward.

The Pentagon once paid $435 for a hammer, after all. But at least in that case it got a hammer.

Edited by Rogerdodger, 24 April 2013 - 08:07 PM.

[Rogerdodger]

BREAKING SEQUESTER NEWS: Guam could “become so overly populated that it might tip over and capsize."

Politicians. You get what you pay for.

Last year he feared that the island of Guam could “become so overly populated that it might tip over and capsize." LINK

Now he warns about a world without balloons because of the government spending more, but less than he wants.
We desperately need the Responsible Helium Administration and Stewardship Act of 2013

Sequester: Congressman Warns of 'World Without Balloons'...

Edited by Rogerdodger, 26 April 2013 - 08:36 PM.

[Rogerdodger]

Who's in Your Wallet?

CONGRESS MOVES TO SPEND $500 MILLION ON TANK ARMY DOESN'T WANT...

Eisenhower warns us of the military industrial complex.
That's when the light bulb went off for the crooks in Washington.
Since then, politicians of every stripe have enriched themselves by putting up all sorts of strawman dangers which require expensive government programs to defeat.
War is declared on nations, groups, poverty, global warming, ignorance, environmental threats, health threats, bird flu, swine flu, breast implants, etc, ad naseam.
On $100,000 salaries, they leave office as millionaires with millionaire pensions, then go into lobbying for even more "Urgent" programs which desperately need more funding.

Edited by Rogerdodger, 28 April 2013 - 10:38 AM.