QOTD — Have You Seen Your Congressional Delegation Weigh In on the Sequester?
Seriously — the past week (especially this weekend) has send lots of legislators to the airwaves to weigh in on the sequester. Most of the Democrats are out making the case for their plan to replace the sequester. The GOP either: 1) aren’t talking; 2) blaming Obama or 3) saying the sequester is no big deal. After a quick Google search and look at each of their websites, none of them has addressed the looming sequester at all.
Not that a statement from any of them would change the train wreck that is the coming sequester. But given that there is plenty of press here on what this sequester would mean for Delaware, and the Governor weighed in last week. Frankly I’m thinking that the lack of discussion of this problem is the real signal that the sequester would happen — otherwise, we would have been treated to the usual bipartisan theater on this thing.
Tags: Chris Coons, John Carney, Tom Carper
I think the goal is to keep the jobless recovery going. Corporations are already doing great, and they fear a real recovery that includes jobs. Why would they want a recovery that would just increase their labor costs? Hiring people to meet new demand would only lower their margins, and Wall Street hates that. They won’t be done until we have sold off all our assets to the wealthy and capitulated to permanent wage losses. As Andrew Mellon supposedly said in the Great Depression:
It is strange that there isn’t the usual ass covering going on.
What’s strange is how hard it must be to say nothing about the sequester… when it’s all everyone is talking about. This kinda seems deliberate, no?
If it happens it leaves us vulnerable to a defense-only hike which would pass easily. Which is exactly the strategy we failed to execute on the cliff – go over, and then make deals selectively from the bottom. Looks like that’s the strategy Repubs are following here.
Better to make a deal now to keep most of the non-defense spending. Like the cliff deal.
I wonder if the sequester isn’t the back half of the cliff deal. What about it, Joe Biden?
Our guys aren’t talking about the sequester because they’re all for it, but that’s not a good Democratic talking point.
Carper = the heir to Bill Roth
Carney = learned while sitting at Carper’s knee
Coons = I’m no bearded Marxist.
Carper and Carney’s fresh comments now posted here http://blogs.delawareonline.com/dialoguedelaware/2013/02/26/carney-prospects-for-budget-deal-dim/
The cliff deal was signed three days after we went off the cliff, so why are we now treating Friday as some kind of apocalyptic deadline? They can pass something any time after Friday. Then the fun and games begin – look for a “defense-only” spending increase, which will pass easily.
When Tom Carper says “reform,” cover your groin with one hand and put the other hand on your wallet:
“We need to raise some additional revenues,” said Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del. “We need to reform our entitlement programs … in ways that save money, that don’t savage our old people and poor people, and preserve those programs for future generations.”