Politics & Current Events
vlagrl29
member
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Sequester Question
Anyone have cliff notes for this? The Sequester is one thing I have not followed at all. I've pretty much stopped watching all news outlets because I think they are all biased so I try and read articles online but have been busy lately. Will a budget actually be passed? What cuts will be made? I'm sure congress will wait till the very last minute like they did with the fiscal cliff.
Re: Sequester Question
Check out Federal News Radio. It's a rather good source of unopinionated news regarding such matters.
http://www.federalnewsradio.com/sequestration
I have been following it (due to it very much affecting me) and still can't keep up or figure it out. I will link some sources but give me a few to find them.
Sequestration, by design, is a bad thing with hacking cuts. That was the whole purpose.
The spin that this isn't really a big deal and palatable deserves kudos to the spin doctors who are selling that to their constituents.
thanks for the link. from what little i read just now, it doesn't sound good.
http://www.federalnewsradio.com/1007/3235326/Just-when-you-thought-it-couldnt-get-worse
This round of furloughs won't likely receive backpay. It would take a last minute settlement to the current construct of the package that is forcing these cuts.
This article does a nice job of explaining how it is devastating but planes won't be falling out of the skies overnight.
Also on the horizon is March 27 when the previous continuing resolution expires.
Perhaps. But we can only avoid it for so long. The unknowing what will be done isn't doing job growth and the economy any favors though.
Putting it off only delays it...yet again. And most voters are getting sick of that. They (all sides) want to put this behind them in time for us to forget about it coming 2014 election cycle.
The OP asked if we thought a budget would be passed. I think it is important to remember that not one budget has been passed since Obama became president.
Presidents propose budgets. Congress passes it.
Pesky details.
Can you imagine trying to get 535 people to agree on your family budget every month?
This is an interesting piece from the Economist that explains a bit more about the federal budget process:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/02/parliamentary-procedure
Why the Senate hasn't passed a budget
Feb 15th 2012, 22:36 by G.I. | WASHINGTON D.C.Republicans have relentlessly harangued the Senate's Democratic leadership for failing to pass a budget resolution. "1,000 days without a budget," was the title of a typical missive last month. On the weekend Jack Lew, who has just been named Barack Obama's chief of staff after serving as his budget director, defended the Senate by saying it couldn't pass a budget without 60 votes, i.e. without the cooperation of some Republicans. Republicans jumped on Mr Lew, pointing out that under Congress' budget procedure, a budget resolution cannot be filibustered and thus only needs a simple majority vote - typically 51 votes - to pass. Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post's fact checker, awarded Mr Lew four Pinocchios, the top score, for fibbing.
In fact, Mr Lew, while wrong on the narrow wording, is right on the substance. It is true that the Senate can pass a budget resolution with a simple majority vote. But for that budget resolution to take effect, it must have either the cooperation of the house, or at least 60 votes in the Senate. Only someone intimately familiar with Parliamentary procedure can explain this. Jim Horney of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is such a person. The following are his edited remarks from our email conversation:
Does the lack of a budget resolution matter? Jim notes that budget resolutions are supposed to set limits on discretionary spending in appropriations bills and facilitate changes in taxes and entitlements via reconciliation instructions or via allocations to authorizing committees. But nowadays, discretionary spending caps have already been set by the Budget Control Act (which ended the debt ceiling standoff) and there is little or no prospect of cross-party agreement on tax or entitlement policies. Moreover:
So yes, the Senate could pass a budget resolution, but without the cooperation of the house or 60 votes, that resolution would not take effect; it would be an empty gesture. The fact that the House managed to pass a budget last year, including a major overhaul of Medicare, reflects its different rules that allow it to deem the budget resolution to have taken effect. But it didn't ultimately matter: the provisions in its budget, including the Medicare changes, were not binding on the Senate.
Aren't you glad you asked?
Could you imagine running a household like that?
Cnon
Governments are not households. For starters, in general Governments can only increase revenue by raising taxes. Households can increase revenue by increasing labor hours. The household vs. government comparison is like comparing how whales mate to humans... it's just a weird analogy.
Budgets actually are fairly meaningless. Have you looked at the Paul Ryan budget? It's pretty darn vague. The government passes spending bills every year. A budget is a roadmap, the spending bills are the actual execution.