Sequester Will Be Nothing Compared to the Next Budget Crisis at the End of March

RUSH: The sequester, ladies and gentlemen. Have you stocked up your food? Have you bought all your water? Have you got all the batteries that you're gonna need? Have you made plans to do without for months and months and months? I'm telling you it's going to be brutal out there. I heard a media person today saying the reason why... Get this, now. The reason why they think this time the sequester's gonna happen -- the reason why there will not be a last-minute solution like there always is -- is because there are no talks.

"Nobody is talking about this. There are no negotiations going on," which I don't think means anything. Guess what happens at the end of next month, folks? We run out of money, for real, government-wide. That's right! The continuing resolution that funds the government under which we're now operating, runs out in toto at the end of March. This sequester is nothing compared to what's coming the end of March. The next crisis is within five weeks, and it's gonna make this sequester look like Romper Room. It's an entire government shutdown that we're gonna get hit with in four weeks.

RUSH: I forget the specific issue. It might have been the fiscal cliff. I think I know what it was. It was the fiscal cliff, as we neared the end of last year. The fiscal cliff, remember that? If we didn't come to some kind of agreement on taxes and tax rates, then we were gonna go over the cliff. The country was gonna be forever changed. People were going to die. They were gonna lose their jobs. There were gonna be no more Pentagon jobs, no more firefighters, no more cops. First responders would be severely impacted.

Remember all of that? It's same stuff you've been hearing last week and the week before. We heard all of that the last two weeks of December. There were people on our side who said, "You know what? Let's just punt on this fiscal cliff. Let's let Obama have what he wants. Let's go ahead and just get the tax issue off the table so that we can move on and deal with what really matters, and that's spending cuts." Do you remember that?

There were many people who offered that advice, among them Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard. They said, "Look, we can't win this tax fight. Let's get taxes off the table," and then we did and Mitch McConnell was running around saying, "Okay now taxes are off the table." I might be confusing this with the debt whatever in January. Hell, these things are all running together now. I know the fiscal cliff was at the end of the year, and then what was next? The debt limit? No.

It was the fiscal cliff, and now we're at the sequester. Whatever. See, there are so many of these crises, and they happen with such regularity that you get them confused. But the point is that back in December Bill Kristol and others (I don't want to lay it off totally on him) said, "Let's just punt! Come on, let's move on. We'll move and we'll really fight the next battle on spending. That's where we'll take Obama to the cleaners." Well, guess what? Yesterday on Fox News Sunday during the All-Star Panel at the end of the program, Bill Kristol urged the Republicans to go ahead and cave on the sequester.

"Let's move on to the next thing and really fight Obama on that." So they're doing it again. The inside-the-Beltway Washington elites are doing it again. Here's how it went down. Chris Wallace said, "A top White House official was so sensitive about the Woodward column..." See, Woodward is out there saying the sequester is Obama's idea. Do you realize...? By the way, I hate to keep interrupting myself, but Bob Woodward continues to remind everybody sequester was Obama's idea, 'cause it's in his book.

You've got young whippersnapper journalists at the Washington Post, one of them Ezra Klein, the new wunderkind is the future of the news business, saying, "I don't know what Bob's doing." In the old days, when you had a journalist emeritus like this, like Woodward, you wouldn't disagree with the guy. You wouldn't throw Woodward overboard. You'd bite the bullet, you would show respect. I mean, Woodward is the reason you got into journalism. Woodward brought down Nixon. You don't publicly disrespect Woodward. But a bunch of young whippersnapper journalists are getting all over Woodward's case because Woodward is blaming Obama for the sequester, and they want to blame the Republicans for it.

Now, it was Obama's idea. Woodward is just being truthful. Woodward is just being a good reporter. The new State-Controlled Media is at odds with Woodward over this, and we have details of that. Anyway, Chris Wallace said, "A top White House official was so sensitive about the Woodward column that he called me last night and he said, it's a complete revisionist history. We accepted this -- all cuts to the sequestration, just as a way to get the trigger. Nobody expected it to happen, and if we had wanted all spending cuts, we could have made that deal with the House Republicans back in August of 2011. And there wouldn't have been any sequestration."

KRISTOL: The White House was being misleading recently when they denied that. On the other hand, a majority of Republicans in Congress voted for it. So they both accepted it as a trigger, as a kind of failsafe mechanism. It would be too horrible to contemplate, and now it’s happening. We are how many months away from the next election? Kind of a long way. Really, in February? Right after a national election, you people can't rise above this sniping? The Republicans in the House sit around saying, "Oh, hey, let it go in, we're tough guys. We're going to stand up to the --" what about the military?

RUSH: What about the military? Serious operational cuts in the military. So Wallace said, "Let me ask one question about what we will henceforth call the Kristol Scenario, which is that they end up passing this halfway cave, a limited cave on tax rates." Anyway what Kristol was doing here was urging the Republicans to just cave on the sequester, which is what happened in December, and move on to the next thing, and by saying, "Look, they voted for it, fail-safe mechanism designed to prevent that which is now happening, here is Kristol. This is what he said back on December 9th, 2012, on Fox News Sunday.

KRISTOL: There will be plenty of other opportunities to debate all these spending, defense, and entitlement issues next year. My view is get the tax issue off the table, it's the weakest one for Republicans right now.

RUSH: Yeah. Yeah. Let the president -- stop fighting him on taxes, let him have it. Now let's just stop on the sequester. We'll move on to the next thing, which is the government shutdown at the end of March, by the way.

RUSH: I alluded to something here in the first hour of the program, and I want to go back to this, because the Wall Street Journal has an interesting story today. I saw CNN this morning, and they were talking to Dana Bash. She's the infobabe up there at White House or Capitol. I forget where she is. Doesn't matter. They ask her (paraphrased), "What's different this time, Dana? I mean, in the fiscal cliff and all these other crises, there's always a last-minute settlement, and crisis is averted."

She was asked, "Why is that not thought to be the case now? Why is everybody so convinced that sequester's gonna happen?" She said, "Because there are no talks, no negotiations. Congress isn't talking to the White House. Obama's not talking to Boehner. McConnell is not talking to Boehner, and McConnell's not talking to Obama -- and the guy that did the video is not talking to the court. I mean, nobody's talking. There aren't any negotiations."

It's in the Wall Street Journal. "Already looking past the current budget impasse gripping the capital, congressional leaders are quietly considering a deal to avert a government shutdown next month -- but at the cost of prolonging across-the-board spending cuts. Attention is beginning to shift from Friday, when the broad cuts known as the sequester kick in, to the next budget deadline: Congress must pass a so-called continuing resolution by the end of March to keep funding government operations."

So the point here is, ladies and gentlemen, they've had everybody worked up now into a fever pitch over the sequester, and all the horrors that will visit us, and it turns out that is nothing compared to what comes up at the end of March. The sequester is simply the result of a deal not having been made to fund certain specific government operations, and the deal is that if they don't get the deal, then of course the absolute worst things will happen: Medicare and defense budget cuts.

But at the end of March the entire government might shut down, folks. Again that's because, see, we don't have -- and we have not had for four years -- an annual budget. We have been funding the government with what are called continuing resolutions. They occur every year to 18 months. This, by the way, is a purposeful policy by the Democrats to keep everybody in a fevered-pitch crisis mode. It is a way to hide their spending plans, which a budget would reveal.

It is a way to actually end up spending more money because during the period of time of the continuing resolution, you can throw anything in there you want, keep spending and spending and spending, and then you are eventually gonna run out of the authority to spend, and you need to renew it. Hence, you need a new continuing resolution. So my point is that however bad they have painted this sequester, however it is they've exaggerated it, at the end of March we're look at another possible entire government shutdown.

Not just a firefighter here and a cop there and somebody over there. We're looking at everybody! We cannot escape this. So what the Wall Street Journal is saying is that the reason there aren't any talks going on right now about the sequester is that it's really chump change compared to the CR, the continuing resolution that'll expire at the end of March. As far as we're concerned, all it means is that we're the gerbils or hamsters that are continuing to run in circles here, and we're not making any ground.

We're not gaining ground. We're just treading water, essentially. We're basically keeping our heads afloat, and we're in a cesspool of crisis, and it's being done on purpose. This constantly crisis mentality is from month to month now, it seems. Every month there is a new budget crisis or challenge, but the next one? That would mean not just the sleigh ride concession in Jellystone Park will shutdown.

By the way, I found the truth about those 800,000 civilian Pentagon employees. Do you know what that really is? Panetta said that he was preparing to lay off 800,000 civilians. Do you know what it really adds up to? They will not work one day a week. They currently work a five-day week. If the sequester happens, they will work a four-day week. They're being furloughed one day of the workweek. That's the panic! They will miss one day's worth of pay from a total workweek.

It's like a school furlough when they run out of money in a school district. They shut school down every Friday for a semester, if they run out of money. That's what the civilians will do, the 800,000. You know, my instinct told me, "We're not gonna lay off 800,000 civilian Pentagon employees over $45 billion. We're just not gonna do it!" Well, I was right. They work a five-day week and what's gonna happen is they'll work a four-day week if sequester happens. Many of them will probably celebrate.

Spot on again...3/27 is when the real fun starts....

Shut the whole damn thing down until they pass a budget. I am done.

At least it won’t be on the backs of the Government Workers and Department of Defense. The cuts will have to come from somewhere else. That is ONE good thing about the Sequestration. Perhaps look at those who don’t work and cut their welfare, unemployment, etc by 20 percent.

>>Shut the whole damn thing down until they pass a budget. I am done.

Never actually happens - they tell all the govt employees to stay home days/weeks whatever, and then when they finally do pass a budget they all come back, they all get their back pay for their time spent at home - yet another tax-payer funded/paid vacation for government hacks...the system is rigged and the govt gravy train never ends.

The budget they would have to pass would be so austere the 41% would have a heart attack and then take to the streets with molotov cocktails.

We are headed for a total economic collapse. I laughed at the part where Rush asked if you have enough food and water stored up. We actually just filled our water storage containers the other day. Push your trays forward and buckle up its going to be a bumpy ride.

"41% would have a heart attack and then take to the streets with molotov cocktails."

When I read that, I had a little chuckle from the visual image it created. Millions of anarchists running through the streets, lighting up their Molotov cocktails -- then keeling over with massive coronaries. The bottles drop, break on the street, and the burning wicks meet the spilled gasoline. Shortest uprising ever.

... we're in a cesspool of crisis, and it's being done on purpose.

Spot on, Rush. Crisis Management taken to a whole new level. Sooner or later, the hamster is going to burn out and then it'll be Hell to pay.

Obama the community organizer, stirs up one rumor after the other creating crisis' in order to keep people off balance and our elected in an uproar....if they don't do as Obama bids, he just goes around Constitutional Law and writes another Executive Order. Why can this politician break one Constitutional Law after another....because the politically correct refuse to stop him. He's Black...

Remember, the gov’t power grabbers NEED us taxpayers to continue their spending ways? The real rally would be to change all our W-2 exemptions for 10 months (now until Dec) and WE CUT back what we send to the gov’t! NOW THAT’S A REVOLT!

That “800,000 DoD employees to be laid off” canard was pretty poor even compared to the rest of the crop of sequester lies.

If the full sequester was to be $85B this year, and DoD suffers half of it, you can just about figure by looking that an average salary of $50K takes it all, leaving absolutely nothing else in the entire DoD to be cut.

Those who worship obama will worship him no matter what he does. So, why does he keep pushing for more cuts when they’re actually not even cuts? They’re cuts in increases. Because he wants to be the “one” who completely destroys the republican party and in doing so will also completely destroy America. When America falls so will it’s allies. They he will have made his daddy proud and will return to the place of his birth a king.

And we have to remember that half the people in this country worship him. It’s amazing how dumb these people are. Many of them hate everything he stands for yet they vote for him. Republicans vote for republicans because they believe in the GOP platform. Democrats vote for democrats even whey they disagree with the platform. That’s what we’re up against.

“Eve Of Destruction”
Yeah, my blood’s so mad, feels like coagulatin’,
I’m sittin’ here, just contemplatin’,
I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation,
handful of Senators don’t pass legislation,
and marches alone can’t bring integration,
when human respect is disintegratin’,
this whole crazy world is just too frustratin’,
and you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction.
Written by P.F. Sloan, and sung by Barry McGuire.
http://youtu.be/ntLsElbW9Xo

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