-Laelth

A few labs and aerospace companies will have revenue, but all of that resource is ultimately wasted. It is not as effective as weatherproofing jobs, unemployment insurance, or the just-expired "payroll tax cut".

Anyone who thinks that this is just going to hurt Boeing and Booze Allen and Hamilton is way off. Our government directly or indirectly employs a staggering amount of people. They are all going to get a %20 pay cut. 20% is a lot of money for a lot of people, there is not way to make it up. No unemployment etc.

The sad thing about it is, this will now hurt those who do not work for the government or with the government. Less dinners out, less vacations, less cars, etc. EVERYONE in the country is going to feel this. It is going to hurt.

Make no mistake, defense always needs to be cut at the conclusion of a war, but this, this sequester is not "cutting defense". It is cutting just about every government program and employee by %10-20%.

In other words, the GOP just go their austerity moment. Greece made it look so sexy they could just not help themselves.

What do we have to show for it? The economy is in the pits, our interest payments on our debt are a serious drag: http://treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm - we have an un-balanced budget, our nation isn't anymore secure because of it, and we're failing to make the investments in our country to make it through the next century.

If the choice is between taking it out on social services that keep people from the pit and hurting defense contractors to me...well then I favor the latter.

The White House has taken some positive steps on the Defense budget, but much more is needed. BTW - if we keep going on this path we are going to be much worse than Greece. Let's get the damn car out of the ditch for good. The President should propose a package where for every dollar taken out of the Defense budget a dollar is invested in infrastructure and green energy and we should take out what we need to do that on an equal proportion with stopping the cuts to social services.

Lots more people will suffer.

Here's Deans reasoning: Sam Stein: There’s a school of thought that says now is just not the right time to do any cuts of any variety. [Congressional Budget Office Director] Doug Elmendorf testified that if sequestration went through, you’d lose 750,000 jobs in the first year. So what about the argument that you should put off sequestration for a year and not have any cuts at all?

Howard Dean:Well, the problem is that it’s never a good time to do cuts. When I look at these guys on Sunday talk shows, they’re all over the place. They all say we need cuts and when you try to pin them down, they don't have any. So either they can be serious about the deficit or not. They're not. And I think cutting the Pentagon is the good thing to do. I don’t think we’re going to get another chance. If you want to put this off for six months, yeah okay. But I don’t want to miss this chance. We already missed our chance before.

In the last year, what they did was they made permanent the Bush tax cuts under $400,000. The Republicans kicked their ass in that deal. And inside the Beltway people spun it in a different way. But, in effect, the Republicans won that battle. And now, I think we’ve got to make the cuts and if we don’t make the cuts, then the deficit will be dealt with in a worse balance later on.



SS:The sequester is broad. It doesn't discriminate between good or bad programs. Aren't you worried about what effect hundreds of billions in Medicare provider cuts will have?

Dean:No. I’m not in the least worried about Medicare provider cuts. The president essentially proposed them in the State of the Union. Whether this comes from drug companies or provider cuts, we’re going to do those anyway as soon as they get around to doing what really has to be done, which is paying by the patient, not by the procedure.

It’s an odd view from the left. But there are actually some people who think I’m right.

SS:You’re comfortable risking a short-term recession to take advantage of this opportunity.

Dean:I think you’ve got to. It will be a short term, light, small recession. Look, we’re in deep trouble financially in this country. And, you know, there’s going to be a tremendous amount of pain. You can pay me later or you can pay me now, but paying later is going to be much worse and it’s going to hit much more vulnerable people than this does.

We've got to get out of this kick the can move and go big. The real problem I've had with Simpsons-Bowles is that what it looks to do to entitlements is what we should be doing to the Pentagon! - Every branch of the military is getting new major weapon systems in the next decade but we're going to cut the WIC program.

Fucking war machine.