22 Congressmen Demand Keeping Sequestration Budget Cuts That Leave Kids Out Of Classrooms And The Elderly Out Of Food

— by Bryce Covert

Three Republican Representatives, Mick Mulvaney (SC), Jim Jordan (OH), and Steve Scalise (LA), sent a letter on Thursday to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) advocating to keep spending in any agreement that results from the current budget conference at the sequestration level of $967 billion in 2014. Their letter has 19 other signatures so far and lawmakers can sign un until Monday.

Claiming that Democrats “want the diversion of another shutdown” to deflect from the troubles with Obamacare, they write, “[W]e encourage you to allow a vote as soon as practicable on a full-year ‘clean CR’ funding bill at the levels established in law by the Budget Control Act,” which set sequestration’s automatic cuts and “is the law of the land.” It also says, “Our Democrat colleagues are now threatening to shut the government down in order to change that. We should not permit that to happen.”

Other Republicans have been worried about sequestration’s cuts, particularly to defense spending. Reps. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) and  introduced a bill this week that aimed to cancel sequestration cuts to the Department of Defense for the next two years. And Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) negotiations with Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) look set to yield a higher spending level closer to $1 trillion for next year, which would cancel sequestration’s cuts to programs while keeping its deficit reduction through higher revenues from increased fees. “Most Republicans — conservatives and moderates alike — are hoping Ryan and Murray succeed, because they believe sequester level spending is unsustainable,” Jake Sherman writes in Politico.

But Mulvaney, Jordan, and Scalise aren’t the only Republicans who have come out in favor of keeping sequestration. While Republicans originally tried to pin the blame for the cuts on President Obama, at least eight others have said that they’re a good way to cut the budget and something they want to keep. House Republicans also released a budget plan in July with even deeper cuts, although when it came time to implement the specifics so many balked that it didn’t get a vote. Yet they again made sequestration a baseline leading up to the government shutdown by passing a continuing resolution at those levels in the House.

Sequestration’s damage had a wide-ranging effect this year, impacting the elderly, cancer patients, low-income renters, domestic violence survivors, the homeless, preschool and K-12 students, scientists, the long-term unemployed, and Department of Defense workers, among others. It also reduced economic growth and consumer spending. Yet things get even worse next year if the cuts stay in place, as many of the accounting gimmicks and emergency measures departments took to dampen the blow will no longer be available. The damage compounds the longer the cuts go on. On the other hand, the deficit would look better if the cuts were cancelled and the economy could add as many as 1.6 million jobs and 1.2 percent to GDP growth.

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This material [the article above] was created by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. It was created for the Progress Report, the daily e-mail publication of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Click here to subscribe.

House GOP-led Social Security Cmtee Proposing to Cut Benefits for Current Seniors, Veterans and the Disabled!

Draft legislative language released by the House Social Security Subcommittee last night would cut benefits for millions of middle-class and poor Americans still struggling in this economy by adopting a new formula to calculate cost of living adjustments.  Read more about the specifics in this DailyKos article.

The Plan to Turn Medicare into ‘WeDon’tCare’

Paul Ryan is still stuck in the same old rabbit hole.

By Jim Hightower

Apparently, Rep. Paul Ryan missed the outcome of last November’s presidential election. Oh, wait — wasn’t he on the ballot in that election as Mitt Romney’s running mate?

Well, yes, but less than five months later, the Wisconsin Republican seems to have forgotten that he and the Mittster were soundly rejected.

Maybe the trauma of losing big — including failing to win a majority of the votes cast in his own hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin — has his memory slipping.

Whatever the cause, it’s embarrassing to see him now trotting out the very same Republican budget proposal that he wrote last year and put at the center of the Romney-Ryan presidential campaign — the same nauseating budget extremism that induced the great majority of Americans to throw up their hands.

Ryan recently headlined a Washington media event for the re-release of this bucket of right-wing hash. It includes turning Medicare into a “WeDon’tCare” privatized voucher scheme that would deliver seniors into the tender clutches of giant insurance corporations, forcing the elderly to pay more for less.

Also, to save the super-rich from even the slightest tax increase, Ryan again served up a mess of cuts to food stamps, Medicaid, and other vital programs for the poor, while simultaneously jacking up the tax burden on both the working and middle classes.

Then, to make his package even more odious to the general public, he cluelessly re-issued the far right’s cry to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Hello, Paul, it’s reality calling: Obama thoroughly thumped you and Willard on this issue last year. Remember?

And since the election, Obama’s signature health care reform has grown in popularity. Several Republican governors are now seeing the political light and embracing it.

Maybe it’s time for his family and friends to pull the gentleman from Janesville out of the rabbit hole where he’s gotten stuck.

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OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. He’s also editor of the populist newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown. OtherWords.org  | RMoney/RAyn Photo credit to DonkeyHotey/Flickr

The President’s Budget for Fiscal Year 2013

We now face a make-or-break moment for the middle class and those trying to reach it. After decades of eroding middle-class security as those at the very top saw their incomes rise as never before and after a historic recession that plunged our economy into a crisis from which we are still fighting to recover, it is time to construct an economy that is built to last.

The President’s 2013 Budget is built around the idea that our country does best when everyone gets a fair shot, does their fair share, and plays by the same rules. We must transform our economy from one focused on speculating, spending, and borrowing to one constructed on the solid foundation of educating, innovating, and building. That begins with putting the Nation on a path to living within our means – by cutting wasteful spending, asking all Americans to shoulder their fair share, and making tough choices on some things we cannot afford, while keeping the investments we need to grow the economy and create jobs. The Budget targets scarce federal resources to the areas critical to growing the economy and restoring middle-class security: education and skills for American workers, innovation and research and development, clean energy, and infrastructure.

The Budget is a blueprint for how we can rebuild an economy where hard work pays off and responsibility is rewarded.

• President’s Message
• The Budget
• Overview
• Cuts, Consolidations, and Savings
• Analytical Perspectives
• Historical Tables
• Supplemental Materials
• Appendix
• Supplementals, Amendments, and Releases
• OMB Contributors to the Budget
• Fact Sheets
• E-Book
• Past Budgets
• Mid-Session Review

Please take some time to peruse these links and get familiar with the values espoused in the President’s proposed budget.  Then, each time you hear unelected Sen. Heller or Rep. Amodei talk about President Obama operating without a budget for whatever length of time, please remind them that it’s the President’s job to propose a budget and that it’s the job of Congress to pass a budget. President Obama has done that each year he’s been in office.

Remember, according to the Constitution, which the GOP is so fond of talking about, ONLY the House of Representatives can appropriate monies.  So if our nation doesn’t have an approved budget, that’s not the President’s job. It’s the job of Congress to take the budget as proposed by the President, make appropriate adjustments, approve the adjusted budget and return it to him for his signature.  So, they should look in the mirror and chastise their own reflections.

Camping Out at the Legislature

Bob Fulkerson, director of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN), addresses campers at the Legislative building in Carson City Tuesday, May 17. At right is Gim Hollister, former chair of both the Douglas Democratic Central Committee and the Rural Democratic Caucus in Nevada, who set up his tent and joined several organizations camped on the Legislature grounds Monday and Tuesday nights to advocate for the Democratic tax package.