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17,679 Things the Federal Government Has Done Since Sequestration

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Opponents of the sequester say budget cuts are ruining America and that austerity kills. Reason offers a look at what the feds have been up to since the cuts kicked in.

Over at Politico, they’re quasi-blaming the Navy Yard shooting on cuts.

The president of MIT says sequestration is “choking the innovation
economy.”

The Center for American Progress frets that “austerity kills.”

The Atlantic says cuts are “undermining what makes America great.”

The FBI is threatening a 10-day shutdown.

And President Barack Obama said in a speech this week that the sequester cuts “have cost jobs, harmed growth, are hurting our military readiness. And top independent economists say this has been a big drag on our recovery this year. Our economy is not growing as fast as it should and we’re not creating as many jobs as we should, because the sequester is in place. That’s not my opinion. That’s the opinion of independent economists.”

See what the feds have been up to since sequestration and read more from this story HERE.

U.S. Faces Mid-October Deadline to Raise Debt Limit

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debtBut there’s no guarantee — mainly because of partisan disagreement about whether to continue the automatic spending cuts known as the sequester that are slicing defense and domestic agency budgets.

Republicans favor restoring funding to the Pentagon while cutting domestic programs even more deeply. But Democrats want to roll back the automatic defense and non-defense cuts — in part through alternative spending reductions and tax increases on the wealthy.

Although Democrats say they are happy to debate how to fund the government, they add that they won’t negotiate over the separate issue of the debt ceiling.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said Republicans ought not put the nation’s creditworthiness at risk by demanding concessions in return for raising the debt limit.

“I don’t think the American public is going to stand for playing with what remains an economic weapon,” he said. “Playing around with the debt ceiling will create unnecessary economic harm.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Sequester Jester: Obama Warns Disabled Veterans Their Benefits Could Be In Jeopardy

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Photo Credit: APPresident Obama took his case for ending the sequester to hundreds of disabled veterans Saturday, saying he protected their benefits from the “reckless” cuts to the federal budget but suggesting next year might be different.

“It’s hurting our military. I made it clear that your veteran’s benefits are exempt from this year’s sequester,” the president said to the applause of hundreds at the Disabled American Veterans’ convention in Orlando, Fla. “But I want to tell you going forward the best way to protect the VA care you have earned is to get rid of this sequester altogether.”

The president put the blame squarely on Congress, which returns in about four weeks to work on a new federal budget and increasing the federal debt limit.

“We’ve got these reckless, across-the-board budget cuts called the sequester that are hitting a lot of folks hard,” Obama said. “Congress needs to come together and agree on a responsible plan that reduces our deficit and keeps our promises to our veterans and keeps our promises to future generations.”

The cuts went into effect in March after Congress and the White House failed to agree on a more balanced plan to cut government spending.

Read more from this story HERE.

Republicans Revive ‘Penny Plan’ as Sequester Alternative to Balance Budget

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Photo Credit: APAs Congress faces a fast-approaching deadline on passing a federal spending bill, Republican lawmakers are reviving a Tea Party-backed plan with a catchy title that they claim could balance the budget.

The so-called “Penny Plan” would, according to its sponsors, balance the federal budget in two years by using just a 1 percent reduction in spending.

The lawmakers are pitching the plan in the simplest terms — cutting a penny from every dollar the government spends so that spending will soon equal revenue. They cast the plan as a pick-and-choose alternative to the sequester’s across-the-board budget cuts.

“Everybody should be able to live with one percent less in order to help bring this country back from the brink of catastrophic failure,” bill sponsor and Wyoming Republican Sen. Mike Enzi said in submitting the legislation just before August recess.

Enzi is joined by fellow GOP Sens. Rand Paul, of Kentucky; John Barrasso, of Wyoming; Jim Risch, of Idaho; David Vitter, of Louisiana; Johnny Isakson, of Georgia; and Marco Rubio, of Florida. Republican Georgia Rep. Austin Scott introduced similar legislation in the House.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Circumvents Congress Again, Orders Millions in Aid to Palestinians

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Photo Credit: APPresident Obama on Friday afternoon ordered another waiver of congressional restrictions on direct funding of the Palestinian Authority, clearing the way for more U.S. aid.

In the one-page order, Mr. Obama said he was taking the action due to the “national security interests” of the U.S. The move comes as the administration is preparing to host renewed direct talks in Washington between Palestinians and Israelis for the first time since 2010.

The president in March directed about $500 million to be sent to the Palestinian Authority, also waiving the restrictions set by Congress.

Read more from this story HERE.

Sequestration Destroying Naval Readiness

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Photo Credit: APDefense budget cuts have reduced the number of Navy forces that would respond to an emergency in the Persian Gulf and the Western Pacific, the chief of naval operations said.

“A year ago I would tell you we had three [aircraft] carrier strike groups and three amphibious ready groups ready to surge. And if there were a contingency, that we had to take on a large operation, the surge force would be a concern,” Adm. Jonathan Greenert told reporters at the Pentagon…

Until this year, the Navy had maintained two carrier groups in the Gulf. Only one is maintained there now because of spending cuts known as sequestration that will require the Pentagon to trim its spending by $500 billion over the next 10 years.

After sequestration kicked into effect, the Navy withdrew all combat ships from its Southern Command, curtailed training and deployments, halted restoration and modernization projects, and minimized base operations.

Read more from this story HERE.

White House Defends Potential $100 Million Africa Sequestration Trip as “Great Bang for Our Buck”

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Photo Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais

The White House Friday defended the first family’s upcoming weeklong trip to Africa, which could cost taxpayers up to $100 million, as “great bang for our buck.”

“There will be a great bang for our buck for being in Africa because when you travel to regions like Africa that don’t get a lot of presidential attention, you tend to have very longstanding and long-running impact from the visit,” said Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to President Obama.

The Obamas’ trip, at a time of “sequestration” budget cuts, will take them to Senegal, Tanzania and South Africa from June 26 to July 3. Citing a confidential planning document, the Washington Post reported that the trip will cost between $60 million to $100 million.

The excursion will involve military cargo planes airlifting 56 support vehicles, including 14 limousines, and three trucks to carry bulletproof glass panels to cover the windows where the first family is set to stay. A Navy aircraft carrier or amphibious ship with a fully staffed medical trauma center will be stationed offshore in case of an emergency.

Fighter jets will fly in shifts to provide around-the-clock protection over the president’s airspace. The trip will reportedly involve hundreds of Secret Service agents.

Read more from this story HERE.

In Time of Sequesters, Federal Government Posts 27,000 Job Openings

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Photo Credit: Charles DharapakThe budget cuts known as sequestration were supposed to wreak havoc, forcing the shrinking of critical workforces including airport security officers and food inspectors. But since sequestration kicked in March 4, the government has posted openings for 4,300 federal job titles to hire some 10,300 people. The median position has a salary topping out at $76,000, and one-fourth of positions pay $113,000 or more, according to an analysis by The Washington Times of federal job listings.

Altogether, the jobs will pay up to $792 million per year. Including job postings that have been open since before sequestration, the government is in the market for 27,000 employees who will make up to $1.8 billion a year.

The jobs posted since sequestration include 2,800 positions at the Department of Veterans Affairs, 519 at the Indian Health Service and 50 at the Smithsonian Institution.

They also include service jobs seemingly designed to ensure that existing government employees live well.

The Defense Department is recruiting 71 bartenders and 123 waiters. If they worked full-time, these employees would earn more than $3.4 million a year. Nearly half of these positions were first posted after sequestration kicked in.


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Obamacare Broke: Sebelius Begs for Donations

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Photo Credit: Washington PostHealth and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has gone, hat in hand, to health industry officials, asking them to make large financial donations to help with the effort to implement President Obama’s landmark health-care law, two people familiar with the outreach said.

Her unusual fundraising push comes after Congress repeatedly rejected the Obama administration’s requests for additional funds to set up the Affordable Care Act, leaving HHS to implement the president’s signature legislative accomplishment on what officials have described as a shoestring budget.

Over the past three months, Sebelius has made multiple phone calls to health industry executives, community organizations and church groups and asked that they contribute whatever they can to nonprofit groups that are working to enroll uninsured Americans and increase awareness of the law, according to an HHS official and an industry person familiar with the secretary’s activities. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk openly about private discussions.

An HHS spokesperson said Sebelius was within the bounds of her authority in asking for help.

But Republicans charged that Sebelius’s outreach was improper because it pressured private companies and other groups to support the Affordable Care Act. The latest controversy has emerged as the law faces a string of challenges from GOP lawmakers in Washington and skepticism from many state officials across the country.

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NASA Chief Confident that Manned Mars Mission will Happen Soon

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Photo Credit: Reuters If the prospect of spending a thousand days up to 140 million miles away from the Earth was not enough of a deterrent, killer radiation levels and enforced radio silence would surely deter most volunteers from travelling to Mars. Nasa, however, has revealed that near-record numbers are applying for its astronaut training programme, as renewed enthusiasm for space travel is fueled by growing hopes of a manned Mars mission.

Since the successful landing of the Curiosity rover in August, the scientific community has begun to take more seriously a promise from President Obama, made in 2010, to land humans on the surface of Mars within 20 years or so. Some privately-backed rival ventures are even forecasting that they will get to Mars orbit as early as 2018; Nasa plans a deep-space practice mission, to rendezvous with a captured asteroid, by 2025.

“Interest in sending humans to Mars has never been higher,” Nasa’s chief administrator, the former astronaut Charles Bolden, told a conference in Washington on Monday. “‘We now stand on the precipice of a second opportunity to press forward with what I think is man’s destiny, and that is to go forward to another planet.”

Within the next few weeks, Nasa plans to announce which 20 trainee astronauts it has chosen from 6,300 recent candidates – its second-highest application total since the agency was established, in 1958. “These astronauts will be among the first trained specifically for long-duration space flights,” said Bolden.

Despite sweeping US budget cuts under the sequestration, Nasa still hopes for an annual budget of $17.7bn – which will be increasingly targeted on the Mars mission. The agency is seeking congressional approval to outsource to private contractors all future rocket missions to low earth orbit, so it can concentrate on deep space instead.

Read more from this story HERE.