Posted on 03/19/2013 6:53:32 AM PDT by SkyPilot
Rep. Bill Enyart might be a Democrat and Rep. Rodney Davis a Republican, but the two rookie lawmakers in Southern Illinois share one fear.
Sequestration could cost them their seats.
Enyart and Davis are three months into their new jobs — representing next-door districts — and constituents already are blaming them for not doing enough to stop the automatic spending cuts.
This week, 4,500 civilian workers at nearby Scott Air Force Base will receive furlough notices — a troubling reminder for Davis, who won his seat last fall by just 1,002 votes.
Enyart’s no better off: He pledged to protect Scott during his 2012 campaign, but at last weekend’s St. Patrick’s Day parade in his hometown of Belleville, several people shouted, “Stop the sequester!” as he walked by tossing green beads to children.
“Certainly, in my district, we’re in crisis stage,” Enyart told POLITICO after marching in the parade.
This tale of two districts is a reminder for some in Washington who still think about sequester as an abstract political fight. On the ground, the cuts are real — and so are the political consequences.
(PHOTOS: How sequestration could affect you)
Davis, who holds a part of Abraham Lincoln’s old district and the state capital of Springfield — is considered one of the best pickup opportunities in 2014 for Democrats. After all, he had the narrowest margin of victory last cycle for any successful Republican.
To Democrats, the thinking is that Davis’s constituents in rural Illinois and the college towns of Champaign, Normal and Springfield will be so upset with Republican leadership over the spending cuts that they will send him packing next November.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
The 50% “cut means the military wont have as much $ as it thought, but it will still be more than last year
If the military had to, could it survive next year on what it spent this year?
I sure as hell could
Utter nonsense. The folks who join our all volunteer military would never do so, since they are, for the most part, Conservatives.
That doesn’t hold true for the thugs who join BATFE, nor would I put it past Chairman Obama to create his own army, the way Hitler did with the SS.
He did promise to do so, right ?
I went to many sites, mostly .gov, but of course they were full of double speak. Found a site that explained it in plain english. Of course you will not accept it since it is a "K Street source. LOL.
Be careful making broad generalizations like the person you talked to. As you know, there are two sides to every sword.
Anyways I found this source.
http://www.csbaonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Analysis-of-the-FY-2013-Defese-Budget.pdf
An excellent, non BS plain english explanation. Start at page 9
I will not tell you what to conclude, but for me I walk away with 2 items.
1. There will be a "real" dollar cut to the DOD
2. Considering OCO, mandatory expenditures, outlays, and awarded contracts . . . the total cut over 9 years is less than 5 percent.
Who is to blame is all thats left to argue about. I dont waste my time on that crap. changes nothing
The Dept of Defense is not necessarily a Constitutional agency -- in fact, it could be easily argued that it is not: the Constitution only allows for the Army and Navy (Marines are a sub-department of the Navy), which means that the Air Force is extra-constitutional. Thus the DoD cannot be said to be wholly constitutional.
It could be argued that the Department of Transportation is more Constitutional: this is because the Congress is supposed to make commerce between the States regular, which is much of what the DOT does (though it could be pruned very much, but that is like most government agencies in general); the Post Office is another agency, being explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, which is more Constitutional than the DoD.
I think that is a bit of a stretch.
The founders clearly intended for the nation's common Defense - so much so that it is in the preamble.
The argument you advanced regarding commerce has been utilized by every tyrant-wannabe, Socialist, and Communist in US Congressional history as an excuse to impinge on American freedoms, from everything from gun ownership to health care.
Which is why I said that it could be argued, rather than actually arguing it.
The founders clearly intended for the nation's common Defense - so much so that it is in the preamble.
Danger lies that way -- the preamble also mentions providing for [general] welfare.
The purpose of a preamble is to provide a rationale/reason that such a document is being written; it is therefore an explanatory/clarification section rather than a mandate. (Besides, if there's a preamble that everyone needs to know it's that of the Bill of Rights rather than that of the Constitution: if more people read the Bill of Rights with the clarifying statement of its preamble fixed firmly in their minds then things like gun control or TSA or no-knock raids wouldn't exist or even "be on the table".)
The argument you advanced regarding commerce has been utilized by every tyrant-wannabe, Socialist, and Communist in US Congressional history as an excuse to impinge on American freedoms, from everything from gun ownership to health care.
And the only reason that is the case is because the government has undermined itself: the only way they establish such 'precedent'* (spit) is to violate all sound reasoning. In Wickard v Filburn, the case they use to justify such expansion, their reasoning can be summed up as: even things that are never entered into the general market could impact their owner/producer's consumption and thereby impact the market, the subsequent impact on the market of his [non]participation is therefore reason that his activities can be regulated and prescribed by congress. -- This faulty reasoning is further expanded in Raich where they went so far as to say that someone growing a crop of marijuana for their own use could be regulated despite there being no [interstate] market for it because such market is banned by the Congress's own anti-drug laws. This makes the Congress both immune from undermining themselves AND from any restraint imposed on them by the Constitution.
BTW -- The Bill of Rights, amending the Constitution, should be viewed as lawfully superior to the rest of the Constitution [and prior amendments] (this is the effect of altering the Constitution); with this view, the Government cannot lawfully regulate commerce to the detriment of arms as the Second Amendment does indeed say that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed: being written in the passive voice the actor, and the method thereof, are irrelevant.
* - "Precedent" is nothing less than the judiciary playing the children's game "Telephone" with your liberties and [legal-]rights. The judicial system has elevated 'precedent' to the level of the Constitution, and in so doing have devalued the Constitution and, indeed, made it less than the 'historic ruling' which they use to interpret it.
No ID to vote! The only purpose this serves is to foster oter fraud.
Then there's the machines that we use. . . .
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