Posted on 02/09/2013 6:11:04 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Senate Democrats are digging in against Republican calls for deeper spending cuts by bringing out some of their favorite punching bags: corporate jets, Wall Street and Big Oil.
With the automatic budget cuts in the sequester coming up next month, Democrats hope to vote on an alternative plan to raise taxes on some of their favorite boogeymen in hopes of shifting the blame when the GOP inevitably rejects it.
Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray of Washington, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana and Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski of Maryland met Thursday to map out their options and plan their public rollout.
The Democratic public pressure campaign is expected to begin in earnest next week, starting with President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday and a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing expected Thursday at which senior administration officials will most likely sound the alarm that so-called sequestration cuts would devastate the economy.
Votes could come as soon as next week, though they might slip until the end of the month after the Senate’s weeklong Presidents’ Day recess.
According to sources familiar with the matter, Democrats are leaning toward a plan that would be split 50-50 between spending cuts and tax hikes, financed in large part by new taxes on corporate and wealthy taxpayers.
“I’m not identifying replacement cuts — I’m working on a balanced solution,”Mikulski told POLITICO on Thursday. “We’ve already taken those cuts. … I think there’s consensus that we need revenue and there’s also an understanding that we’ve already worked to substantially cut domestic spending.”
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I don’t think the Republicans are going to come to the table. A half and half deal on new taxes and budget cuts? I don’t think it’ll interest anyone much. I’d say that sequestration will occur, and Democrats will be shocked that this whole game was played to the end, and no one took the bait to run to a new deal.
Frankly, you can forecast a dismal second half of 2013, especially around the DC region...with home sales coming to a major stoppage.
When does tar and feather and rope come into play?
The GOP should agree with Big Oil cuts as along as the Dems concede on the Big Green cuts...after all the oil subsidies are less than 1% of the solar and wind scams.
Of course...that argument might be too cogent and straight forward. They should just roll over as usual.
The sooner, the better.
The rats are nothing but communists...every stinkin’ last one of em. The sooner America wakes up and realizes it, the sooner the country will begin to turn around. Even some of the “takers” are now starting to realize that there may soon be nothing left to “take”. They have literally “killed the goose that lays the golden eggs”. Let them simmer in their sequestration. It was THEIR idea along with dear leader’s. May that albatross rot around their necks.
Fact #1 - there are no spending cuts, so digging in against further spending cuts is nonsense. No need to read this worthless pile of grass cuttings further.
Let's just hope that the coming "dust up" helps to educate some folks on how much trouble we are in and how much worse it will get if we can't curb the insane spending/borrowing/printing.
It seems like they are lining up to "prove" that lack of government spending causes an economy to crash and to hide the fact that it was excessive spending that caused the whole deal. For some reason, folks can't seem to equate that if you are in deep debt, you cannot spend your way to fiscal health - it looks like the "no responsibility/repercussion" society they have designed is ready to go over the cliff and never figure out why they are crashing and burning.
I see my girl Babs Mikulski right in the middle of this fiasco
I love my state, but we sure have some truly crappy politicians. This little troll has her feet in concrete. No matter how hard we try we just cannot get rid of her.
She does nothing but follow every Democrat talking point as if they were written on Moses’s tablets.
We have been working for five or six decades toward a “mess”. You can go state-by-state and see the trends all the way back to the 1960s. The problem is that we anchored so much of city, county, state and federal government to the economy...that any major changes will do damage to the economy...even when we are doing a positive thing (like cutting waste).
The other side of this is that if we simply saddled the public...all citizens...with a simple twelve-percent personal income tax and then said this is it.....no other funding unless you declare a war, and start a temporary tax on top of the situation at hand, then things would start to make sense.
The bottom line is...the more cash that is in residing in private hands...represents a more positive dynamic for the public (jobs, growth, etc).
I can’t wait for the Depression, Unemployment, and Housing Crash to hit the DC area. I would love to see thousands of unemployed Federal workers.
It should be his blame, and his blame alone, but the media will spread the blame to include Republicans. Regardless, most rational people, including the low information voters, will see Obama as a key non-player
the demoKrats- they were for sequestration before they were against it...
All those fed workers had mortages which won’t be paid. They bought cars via Ford, Chevy, and Chrysler. They spent money at Wal-Mart, Walgreens, and Maceys...just like everyone else. The Reagan concept of trickle-down....also means that less money for a year trickles down, and hurts individual business operations.
The long-term look...it gets better. But if sequestration goes into gear....you’d best expect it happen for 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016. Those 22-odd days of furlough each year will add up and subtract off economical improvements.
I’m of the mind that we won’t see any real budget or economic positives until 2017. That’s a long wait.
The sequestration cuts defense spending by $500 Billion in TEN YEARS !!
That means $50 billion a year.
We spend about $680 Billion a year on defense. A cut of $50 Billion means we spend “only” $630 Billion.
How big of a disaster is that really? That’s still greater than the spending on defense of the top 20 defense spending nations combined (Yes, China and Russia included).
Isn’t 40% of budget of the spent on education? looks like that would be a good place to start.
Every person I run into whether democrat or rare republican we have in the state loves mukusky. I don’t get it at all. I love Maryland too but the politics are insane.
Yep - I find it ironic, after watching the "liberal" college kids making such a fuss about not trusting the government and wanting it out of their lives. The same crew, now aging, are the ones that are just fine with total government control and consider the "benevolence" of the Feds to be a good thing. Kind of like a young chicken hating foxes because of the damage they do. Then when the chicken gets older, it decides that foxes are a good thing.
You have never run into me then. LOL.
She is the atypical Democrat, if the party tells her how to vote she votes. Liberal to the Nth degree.
It would be interesting to know what Republicans you ran into.
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