MSNBC: “Small Government” Led To Detroit’s Bankruptcy

White House: Defense Spending Robs Money from Other Federal Programs 

(This makes me so mad as Defense is actually a legit function of government—which most government is not!)

A veto of a $512.5 billion defense funding bill was threatened Monday by the White House budget office, not so much because of complaints about the level of defense spending but because the Obama administration doesn’t want military spending to rob money from other federal programs.  Additionally, the White House complains the House version of the 2014 defense appropriations bill is too generous with military pay, not generous enough with pay for federal civilian workers, and doesn’t include administration-proposed cost-cutting measures such as base closing and raising Tricare health fees for military retirees.

The veto threat, one of a similar series issued by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget about appropriations bills moving through the House of Representatives, came Monday in regards HR 2397, covering defense spending for the fiscal years that begins Oct 1.

“Unless this bill passes the Congress in the context of an overall budget framework that supports our recovery and enables sufficient investments in education, infrastructure, innovation and national security for our economy to compete in the future, the president’s senior advisers would recommend that he veto HR 2397 and any other legislation that implements the House Republican Budget framework,” the OMB letter says.

The House bill, scheduled to be debated and passed this week, represents reduction of about $5.1 billion less than the pre-sequester defense budget for 2013 and is about $3.4 billion less than the Obama administration’s request. When sequestration is taken into account, the proposed budget is $28.1 billion more than current spending, according to the House Appropriations Committee.

Also included in the bill is $85.8 billion for war-related contingency funds.

CONTINUED: http://www.navytimes.com/article/20130722/NEWS05/307220041?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

American Thinker: Obama's Tyranny: Petty or Something More Sinister?

March 25, 2013

Last week, headlines informed us that, because of the Sequester, the FAA will be reducing the number of Air Traffic Controllers and closing 149 control towers completely. Earlier, the Department of Homeland Security released hundreds of illegal aliens awaiting deportation because they could not afford to hold them because of cuts mandated by the Sequester, they said.

Head Start is to face cuts due to Sequestration. Native American children are being sacrificed to Sequestration according to Slate Magazine. The Marine Corps faces massive reductions in manpower reports the Wall Street Journal. The U.S.S. Harry Truman and its escorts are sitting idle in Norfolk, VA because of the Sequester when they should be on their way to the other side of the world.

The TSA is threatening cuts that will push airport security lines out onto the street, while the government had been threatening to cut meat inspections until Congress pushed back. In other words the Administration is holding a gun to the head of almost every single American in its quest to inflict the maximum pain possible on each of us to achieve its political objectives.

When has this occurred in our country's history? When has a president orchestrated such a symphony of hardship for party politics? When has a president gone to such lengths for such a small amount of money?


The Sequester represents $85 Billion out of a budget of $3.5 Trillion, or just a 2.42% reduction in federal spending. On year on year basis, spending is still increasing by over 2% over last year. The math used by the Administration to generate this pain is simply crazy.

But this is the same Administration that decided at the outset to assault conventional energy in order to raise prices so that green energy could compete. I was in some of the meetings where the Green Lobby advocated this, and was stunned at their audacity. So now gasoline is at all time high levels; natural gas is being stymied; coal is in the Most Wanted list and nuclear has been sidelined.

We have a Department of Homeland Security that has become one of the largest bureaucracies in the history of our government in the space of 11 years. There is very little accountability and DHS has extraordinary powers to infringe the constitutional rights of our citizenry. Drones, computer monitoring, and wiretaps are all allowed under the Obama Administration's overwhelming control of the mechanisms of state. Just the other day, DHS announced plans to scan even more private e mail traffic.

There is a simple word for all of this; tyranny.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/03/obamas_tyranny_petty_or_something_more_sinister.html#.UVApLYcEPBc.facebook#ixzz2OYmnUeBU

Gov’t Office Warns Sequester Will Hurt Agency…That Doesn’t Exist Anymore

Of all the “horrors” the March 1 sequester will inflict on our nation, perhaps the most terrifying are the cuts it will force on non-existent government programs, or so says the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).


Yeah, let us explain.

Acting in compliance with The Sequestration Transparency Act of 2012, as Reason’s Mike Riggs notes, the OMB in September 2012 delivered a report detailing the effects of the automatic spending cuts to Congress.

“But there’s a small problem with the report: One of the cuts it warns against would affect an agency that no longer exists–and didn’t exist when the OMB sent its report to congress,” Riggs notes.

“The first line item on page 121 of the OMB’s September 2012 report says that under sequestration the National Drug Intelligence Center would lose $2 million of its $20 million budget,” he adds.

Yes, according to the OMB, that’s roughly 8.2 percent of the overall budget cuts. But wait. There’s more!

CONTINUED:  http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/26/govt-office-warns-sequester-will-hurt-agencythat-doesnt-exist-anymore/

Tea Party Patriots to Govt: Stop Squirming. Sequester!

It’s time for government to honor its promise to cut over-spending.

WASHINGTON D.C. – Today, Tea Party Patriots, the nation’s largest tea party organization, called on the government to stop trying to squirm out of sequestration, and to honor its promise to cut over-spending.

“President Obama signed into law a promise to cut over-spending,” said Lynn Childs, Tea Party Chairman for Coastal Carolina Taxpayers Association.  “Now the government is trying to squirm out of the deal and keep over-spending. The Tea Party Patriots and CCTA are calling on the government to stop trying to squirm out of sequestration, stop over-spending, and to honor its promises – for a change.”

The so-called “sequestration” deal, signed into law by President Obama in 2011, was to have government over-spend a little more slowly this year than it did last year. A July 2011 White House fact sheet praised the deal that gave us the sequester as “a win for the economy and budget discipline.” At the time, President Obama said it didn’t impact the middle class or working families. Now, the President calls his sequester idea “a really bad idea” that would hurt middle class and working families.

“The President and his party are trying to scare American families into letting government over-spend even more. 73% of Americans want the government to cut over-spending, while only 15% want the government to spend more,” said Childs, quoting a poll by Anderson Robbins Research and Shaw & Company Research.

“It’s time for government to stop squirming, honor the sequestration deal they created and signed, and cut government over-spending now.”

Tea Party Patriots is a national grassroots coalition with more than 3,400 locally organized chapters and more than 15 million supporters nationwide. Tea Party Patriots is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting the principles of fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets. Visit Tea Party Patriots online at www.TeaPartyPatriots.org.

For further information, please contact Lynn Childs, 252-528-0500, email lynn.ccta@gmail.com./

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POPVOX--A Great way to let your voice be heard!

February 1, 2013

I know it's Friday afternoon, but I wanted to send you a note about a new Sequestration page we created so people can weigh in on Sequestration:  https://www.popvox.com/bills/us/113/x105.

I hope that your organization will post your position on Sequestration: use the code x105 as the bill number in your Legislative Agenda.

About Sequestration

In August 2011, bipartisan majorities in both the House and Senate passed the Budget Control Act, which established "Sequestration" -- automatic, across-the-board cuts to federal spending to take effect on January 2, 2013 -- if Congress does not act on further deficit reduction. Sequestration requires $109 billion annually in federal spending cuts, resulting in a 9.4% reduction in defense discretionary funding and an 8.2% reduction in nondefense discretionary funding.

However, Congress was unable to reach agreement on spending cuts, and sequestration was delayed until March 2013 as part of the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 -- the deal that avoided the full "Fiscal Cliff." Once again, Congress will consider whether to take action to avoid sequestration. - https://www.popvox.com/bills/us/113/x105

Thanks for using POPVOX!

Sincerely,
Rachna Choudhry
Co-founder, POPVOX.com
Join the conversation with other POPVOX users on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn.

Sequester would cut $11 billion from Medicare

Sequestration would cut $11 billion from Medicare and take millions of dollars away from Affordable Care Act implementation programs.


The Obama administration released its highly anticipated report Friday on the effects of sequestration — a blunt-force budget-cutting tool that Congress created when it raised the country's debt ceiling. The sequester would make deep cuts to defense spending as well as domestic programs. Medicare payments to doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers would take an across-the-board 2 percent cut. That would come out to roughly $11 billion, according to the administration's report. The sequester would also make significant cuts to programs created by the Affordable Care Act, which are not subject to the 2 percent cap. Grants to help states establish insurance exchanges — new marketplaces for private insurance coverage — would lose $66 million, the administration said. The law's prevention and public health fund would lose $76 million.

CONTINUED:  http://teapartyorg.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=4301673%3ATopic%3A971893&xgs=1&xg_source=msg_share_topic

BREAKING: Obama Proposes $129M Cut From 'Embassy Security, Construction, and Maintenance

WONDERFUL!! JUST GREAT!!! BREAKING: Obama Proposes $129M

 Cut From 'Embassy Security, Construction, and Maintenance

Today, President Obama released the long-awaited “sequestration report,” detailing the cuts the White House would make to the budget under last year’s Budget Control Act if no deal is reached in Congress. And there, buried on page 136, is the White House’s proposed cuts to “Embassy Security, Construction, and Maintenance.” $129 million. That’s a full 8.2 percent of the possible sequestrable amount. It’s a massive slash of the budget for our embassies, consulates, and security abroad. That’s just part of the White House’s ridiculously destructive sequester proposal, which takes a chainsaw to the defense budget. Most defense programs would get a 9.4 percent cut, and a 10 percent cut to other Pentagon accounts.


Medicare, by contrast, would take only a 2 percent hit. “No amount of planning can mitigate the effect of these cuts,” wrote the Office of Management and Budget. “It is not the responsible way for our nation to achieve deficit reduction. The report leaves no question that the sequestration would be deeply destructive to national security, domestic investments and core government function.”

President Obama brought about this sequestration himself when he refused to cut the budget, and his Democratic allies in Congress did the same. Republicans didn’t want to tie cuts to tax increases; Obama did. Democrats’ default position was that cuts had to come from defense. And thus we ended up with the Budget Control Act, which left Congress in the position of watching President Obama slash the military budget if they couldn’t reach some sort of arrangement.

In the aftermath of worldwide attacks and assaults on our embassies and consulates, it certainly looks incredible for the President to insist on deep slashes to our embassy security budget, let alone our overall defense budget. But that’s what this administration is all about: cutting defense, and leaving America and her emissaries more vulnerable.


CONTINUED:  http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/09/14/Obama-releases-sequester-report-cuts-defense-embassy-budget