At a recent campaign stop in Virginia, Mitt Romney discussed his eagerness to avoid the upcoming sequester on Defense funds. He warned under a Romney administration "we're going to have to eliminate" some programs in order to remain revenue neutral.
“I’m not going to send money to Amtrak. I'm not going to send money to PBS. Not going to send money to the National Endowment for Humanities and Arts," Romney told NBC affiliate station WRC on Thursday.
To be fair, this is not exactly news; Romney named these exact three cuts in an interview with Fortune Magazine last month. To get a sense of what they mean, Sam Stein over at The Huffington Post reported "the government spends $444 million a year on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (the parent organization of PBS); Amtrak received $1.56 billion in federal funding in 2010, with $1.3 billion in stimulus funds; while the National Endowment of the Arts lists the current level of federal funding at approximately $146 million."
As WRC's Julie Carey noted in the video, "That doesn't add up to much." Cutting a couple billion dollars will put only a small dent in our national debt, currently in the trillions.
Republicans have targeted these programs for years. Amtrak, for example, has long been a thorn in the GOP's side. Reagan halved its funding in the 1980s. Bush 43 attempted to privatize it, to no avail. And Romney seems to have the same impulse.
But with record ridership due to high unemployment and high gas prices, Amtrak has reason to fear a dramatic slash in funds. The House Appropriations Subcommittee proposed cuts last year that the National Association of Railroad Passengers called "tantamount to shutting down the entire Amtrak network, because the remaining routes could not cover the system's overhead costs."
So though they may only dent the deficit, Amtrak cuts could have serious consequences for commuters, especially those in the northeast corridor, like "Amtrak Joe Biden." And just when they began testing the Acela trains for travel at 160mph!
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Well, the Freight Railroads have been on a major resurgence in the past decade, and there may be money from that quarter to invest in a privatized Amtrak.
PBS can bite the bullet, and take on advertising clients, just as all private broadcasting have to.
And the NEA has its share of major contributors, and can do some creative fund drives and fund raising events and shows and sales, I'm sure.
Of course, this post topic forgot the cutting out of federal dollars to Planned Parenthood, and their abortion mill centers.
A few hundred million here, a billion there, and soon or later we are talking real money, to update Speaker of the House Dirkson. Every interest group loves its federal largess; problem is we no longer have the luxury of supplying it. Not until the economy is turned around by a little dose of austerity that helps to build the faith in our private sector and consumer based economy that the runaway federal deficit spending is not going to be responsible for major increases in our taxes.
Speaker of the House Dirkson?
Do you mean Everett Dirksen? Senator Everett Dirksen from Illinois? Republican Senate minority leader for many years...
You should look into hiring a handler for your Interet trips, seriously...
Yeah, well, so I mixed his positionsl what is the politicians say "I mis-spoke? LOL!
But Dirkson did represent a Congressional district in Illinois thru the worst of the Depression years and thru World War II and its Cold War aftermath before getting elected to the Senate in 1949 and becoming minority leader in 1958, where served a decade as the runaway spending of the Kennedy/Johnson and then the Johnson Presidency took place, Cab Driver. And he made that famous remark at the worst of the Lyndon Johnson and Democrat Party controlled Congress Great Society social program spending binge. So it is very apropos to today, no?
Ha Ha Ha! As always Keith you are dead wrong! How as austerity worked out for Europe? Lets see every single country that has tried it has been thrown into double dip recession and some have unemployment as high as 25%. Ha Ha Ha!
That's what I love about you conservatives. You never see a failed policy that you didn't love.
Einstein said the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again expecting different results! Republicans are insane by the definition of the smartest man that ever lived! Ha Ha Ha!
The private sector hasn't invested money only because of the uncertainty created by the Republicans in Congress who have refused to pass 20 jobs bills in a row. These bills are Obama's economic plan and are what American workers need to ensure that they will have wages to spend on the products that wall street will produce as well as the taxes produced by those wages and items bought that the government needs to boost the economy.
It is the Republicans in Congress and their refusal to participate in Obama's successful economic recovery, as opposed to the failed "austerity-type" recoveries of Europe, which they want to institute under Mittens.
Obama's stimulus and auto bail out have been highly successful. All we need now is to throw out the obstructionist Republicans and re-elect Obama and we will be onto a full fledge recovery.
They say a fool is born every minute, and the minute I just spent reading the two comments of the above fool assures me that must be true. SedWHINER, you take the pain when it is small and bearable, or you take it unbearably later, but you will take the pain eventually. Greece and now Spain are having to take the severe pain now in Europe, and Italy and Portugal may be in their shoes pretty soon also, as their national debt exceeded their nations' annuasl Gross Domestic Product, which is, of course, the same state we just entered when we hit $16 Trillion in our National Debt, $5.6 Trillion of that rolled up in just the past 3&3/4ths years of runaway unbudgeted deficit spending primarily on failed and inefficient "stimulus" and greatly expanded social programs.
Got to either grow the economy to get more tax revenue, or cut the nations expenses, or a combination of the two. The first thing we have to do is curb the use of our national credit card, however, and set the conditions by which the private sector can grow again, without federal government heavy handed roadblocks.
As to the private sector corporations and small businesses with their locked up $3 Trillion of profits (another estimated $1 Trillion or so overseas as they would receive 35% more taxes on if they brought those profits back to be put to use here in expanded domestic business and industrial activities, added to the taxes they already paid overseas), they are waiting to put these profits to work whenever the huge recent deficit spending stops, and the calls for increased taxes that go along with that stop, and that isn't until a Romney/Ryan ticket gets elected, and the Republican Party controls the Senate (when that happens we actually have a government operating under a budget again) as well as Republican continued control of the House of Representatives. The private sector has no faith in this President and his Democrat colleagues in the Senate, you know!
OB and crones say Romney closed plants and people lost their jobs. What about the 20,000 non-union workers at Delphi that lost their pensions. I guess that is okay.
Stimulus, oh, yeah those shovel ready jobs that "well I guess they weren't so shovel ready" said POTUS
Ha Ha Ha Keith talk about fools! Spain Greece and Italy have in actuality adopted your plan of austerity and are in actuality now suffering massive unemployment and double dip recessions. Your claim that the USA may in some vague point in the future suffer that same fate (if the Republicans perhaps keep up their obstruction efforts for example), is not the same thing as actuality.
So your argument is let's definitely enact the failed policies of Italy, Greece and Spain?
You truly are a Conservative hack! Ha Ha Ha! Why wait for something that might happen in some vague future when you can ensure failure right now? That is the conservative methodology isn't it Keith? Ha Ha Ha!
Oh and DRPepper wants to chime in! 66 of the worlds leading financial groups in the world analyzed Obamas stimulus plan (many of whom don't like the POTUS) and 62 of them said it was a complete and total success. That's exactly why the US is now the only one of the economies that suffered through the Bush recession of '08 that is leading the recovery effort. European countries and corporations are now trading their currencies for US dollars because of the strength of our currency.
Go crawl back down your Limbaugh rabbit hole. Ha Ha Ha!
Grandpa Fuzz seems to finally have availed himself of a search engine to research Dirksen's early political career (that spelling though, is suspect).
He might've investigated further, but he would've discovered a horrible truth, which is that it's likely Dirksen didn't even make the remark attributed to him...
http://www.dirksencenter.org/print_emd_billionhere.htm
Did Dirksen ever say, " A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money"? (or anything very close to that?)
Perhaps not. Based on an exhaustive search of the paper and audio records of The Dirksen Congressional Center, staffers there have found no evidence that Dirksen ever uttered the phrase popularly attributed to him.
Doc Tyler didn't fare any better with his attempted smear on the Delphi Pension stuff; that's just more manufactured FAUX noise manure that the faithful believe is gospel but more scrupulous researchers discover is pure crapola.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/08/10/fox-hypes-the-daily-callers-cooked-up-story-on/189238
The Daily Caller alleges that emails it has obtained show that the Obama Treasury Department was the "driving force" behind the decision to end the Delphi pension plan, instead of the independent federal agency that insures pensions, called the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC). And Fox News has made the same charge. But the emails show nothing of the sort.
In reality, the emails are so far removed from their context that it's impossible to draw definitive conclusions about them, but the Daily Caller does its best to fill in the blanks by doctoring quotes and ignoring inconvenient information.
Only one of the 16 emails comes from a Treasury Department employee, and it doesn't show pressure to terminate the Delphi pension. In fact, unions aren't mentioned at all in the emails.
Around this place, truth, not money, talks and bull@!$%# walks...
Of course I have to chase some of them with the ol' police interceptor, and a few of the zombies prefer to be roadkill in their zeal for self-inflicted martyrdom.
You two need to see the casino manager and try to talk him out of more poker chips; you've been felted.
$870 billion stimulus plan and the additonal hundrends of billion in extensively extended unemployment, welfare, and Food stamp programs (don't think that defict funded increased social program spending wasn't also meant to stimulate the economy, then you haven't been listending to those like Robert Reich and Jerrad Bernstein, Democrat Party economists). And what was the result? 280,000 jobs added between Jan, 2009 and end of Aug, 2012 undeer all that Obama stimulus spending for 280,000 net job growth. Lets see, take $1.25 Trillion conservatively and divide it by 280,000 net job growth and you get an idea on just how inefficient and wasteful all that deficit spending really was, and what a failure it was. And by the way, if you believe that nonsense of 4.6 million jobs add3d to the economy under Obama, you haven't been reading the Department of Labor statistical reports. Most of those jobs were temporary hires that have long since joined the laid off numbers, as we persist with 350 to 390 new Unemployment claims WEEKLY, while the anemic new job growth of less than 100,000 to 130,000 max monthly does not even cover the 150,00 to 160,000 new individuals of working age that enter our labor force each and every month.
1.3 estimated GDP for this quarter that ends tomorrow, and a precipitous drop of 13+% in durable goods manufacturing orders in the quarter to its lowest levels in several years, and a 2.7% drop in home sales in the month of August, worst in nine months, and a like drop in retail sales also. It's not at all a pretty picture. And the inefficient and wasteful deficit spending for stimulus and social programs meant to goose the economy only put it on brief, and fleeting, and now long gone sugar highs, that left us all, like our economy, feeling even lower in vitality than before.
The Financial System and Housing Market collapse recession lasted from late 2007 to the late months of 2009 only, and the $1+ Trillion of stimulus spending in the first year had very little effect on that, as it went to paying people to stay home and not look for work, and largely also went to shore up public payrolls in payback to the unions at the State and Local levels, and to expand Medicaid. And the steady drumbeat of ever expanding social program deficit financed spending since 2009 has done nothing other than encourage more people to stop looking for work, as the statistics show we have the lowest Labor participation rate now since the 1970s, and curiously, the lowest number of new start up small buinesses (the usual engine of employment growth) since the 1970s, both hallmarks of failure of the Jimmy Carter Presidency. Add to that the latest statistic of the drop in just 3& 3/4th years of $4,300 in the average Middle Class annual family income, while food prices and energy prices have skyrocketed, and add in the latest drop of 10% in the value of the US dollar which serves as an additional tax on the consumer, especially with apparel, foot-ware, and electronic purchases, and you see that bleak picture isn't due to get any brighter in the near future. Meanwhile, Obama says his plan is to tax the capitalist job creators more, and spend more on stimulus projects snd social programs. What was the bit about insantity doing the same-o same-o over and over again expecting different results?
Anyone want to argue with all those facts and figures, or are you leftwingnuts just going to keep flapping your gums in your ignornance of what the real world is like! And that is directly leveled as a challenge to you SedWHINER and Cab Driver!
Oh 'Keys2Laundry,'
As always you are immune to fact. We were losing 750,000 jobs a month because of you guys. We have now gained jobs for 30 months in a row. We have gained 4.5 million jobs so far, which is over a million more jobs than Bush created in all eight years of his administration. This with the Republicans in Congress refusing to pass twenty jobs bills in a row including jobs for returning Vets and the Republican Governors firing over 650,000 government employees returning us to the same level of government employment that we had in 1968 at which our population level was almost half what it is now.
It is funny to me that Republicans have believed in stimulus for 70 years up until Obama became President. They believed in job creation and jobs bills until Obama became President. They believed in clean Debt Ceiling bills until Obama became President.
You bemoan the policies your party not only just supported with glee under Bush but has been supporting in opposition to this President and are proposing again under Romney. In fact, they proposed them originally under Reagan.
Obama's economic plan? This Congress has refused to pass it. Ha Ha Ha? You live in a fantasy world. You believe the President is King and the Congress does nothing (which in the case of your Republicans is not actually far from truth). You have betrayed your education and your mind by allowing yourself to simply accept the propaganda of Fox and Limbaugh without question or critical thought.
Evolution is real. The world is round. Women are equals. I hope I didn't give you a heart attack. Lie down and have a beer dude. Rethink your science and fact denying life.
Don't you just love it how Grandpa Fuzz tells us we should listen to Robert Reich after Keith described him last month as unreliable and "thoroughly discredited"?
Must be nice to live in a playpen with an Etch-a-Sketch within easy reach...
Oh yeah. He just flipped out on me on another blog. I guess he doesn't really like it when people fight back right? Ha! He even threatened to report me to "MSNBC" board masters for making fun of his name. Ha Ha Ha.
AGAIN??? As we all have learned, you do that with alarming frequency, Keith...like multiple times a day.
Speaking to your strict adherence of that very behavior, let's talk about the stimulus...
If the stimulus was such a failure, then WHY were so-o-o-o many R politicos so-o-o-o eager, more than willing, and ever ready to pose with an oversize check that was sent to their state and/or otherwise take "credit" for that stimulus money? Hmmmm....?
Before you attempt some asinine "Keith Longey" spin on the topic, be sure you look at those links below, especially the ones with pictures...you should be able to understand those even if you can't decipher the words of the stories.
http://www.examiner.com/article/republican-hypocrites-vote-no-on-stimulus-but-take-money-and-credit-for-good-policy
http://bearmarketnews.blogspot.com/2010/02/more-than-hundred-republicans-bash.html
http://politicaltruths.info/2010/02/22/schwarzenegger-rips-romney-gop-for-stimulus-hypocrisy-p2-politics/
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2009/07/21/51962/jindal-stimulus-check/
http://www.blogforarizona.com/blog/2012/01/brewer-lays-hands-on-stimulus-money-turns-it-into-jobs-creator.html
http://thinkprogress.org/report/touting-recovery-opposed/
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/gop-wont-turn-down-stimulus-spending/nQYQd/
You and reality are total strangers most of the time, aren't you?
"A few hundred million here, a billion there, and soon or later we are talking real money... Every interest group loves its federal largess; problem is we no longer have the luxury of supplying it. Not until the economy is turned around by a little dose of austerity that helps to build the faith in our private sector and consumer based economy that the runaway federal deficit spending is not going to be responsible for major increases in our taxes."
Romney would up defense spending to the tune of two trillion dollars in excess of the amount requested by the Pentagon but that spending is "not" one of those little doses of austerity the Republicans are glad to use to build the faith in ... the government sector. Its too bad stupidity isn't painful.
Well, he's Romney is talking of returning the $500 billion already stripped from the projected Defense Department Budget over the next 10 years, and also stopping the $600 billion that will be stripped from that budget if sequestration occurs as scheduled, which the Defense Department states would be very damaging to our state of preparedness. But Romney is also cognizant of the rise in military force building by China (their first aircraft carrier is just launched this year, and with Iran now capable of missile strike out to 1,500 miles and building towards further, an new anti missile shield deployment for our allies in Europe and the Middle East and North Africa is required over the next 10 years, which had been in the works, but Obama cancelled it, as he is looking for a "peace in our time" to quote Neville Chamberlain dividend to apply to more of his cherished public sector employment and social program spending. And then there is the newly resurgent Russia looking once again under the leadership of their former KGB director Putin to expand their influence internationally once again.
Ha Ha Ha! What makes you think Mittens will be able to get the Tea Party to cooperate in any way and force them to return the stripped defense department funds or the sequestration funds? That wasn't the POTUS! That was Congress! Ha Ha Ha!
...and you right wingers are so regressive about everything you now even believe the old soviet union is resurging! Ha Ha Ha Please pass around the drugs you are on! it must be great to live in the alternate reality you live you life in! ha Ha Ha!
Not so, fool. The POTUS and the Senate Democrats forced the sequestration thru instead of adopting the Simpson Bowles debt reduction plan or the Ryan led House of Representatives budget. and it is the same recalcitrant Senate Democrats that are crying out "Over the Fiscal Cliff Ahead", so that they can engineer their insane goal of cutting Defense spending and increasing the taxes of those making more than $200 thousand, that include many professionals running their practices that employ other people, and also 15% of our most vibrant small businesses. And not to mention that the income lost by those over $200 thousand a year tax payers is not then available to purchase the new stock and bond offerings of our corporations, or to invest in new start-up small businesses, or to revitalize the residential and commercial real estate market, or to lead the way with new durable goods orders for those new business and new real estate ventures, or to purchase the Municipal and State bonds that finance infrastructure improvements without the federal government siphoning off money to support the growing hordes of Washington, DC bureaucrats!.
What was it that Samuel Jackson had to say at the close of his add appearing as a foulmouthed hoodlum intruder into a couples home? Wake up fools!
Nice of Fuzzy to give Jackson credit for an effective add...
Didn't John McCain vote for the sequestration?
Why...YES...he did. Did he suddenly change party affiliations? Why...No...he didn't.
In point of fact, 174 R's voted FOR it in the House. 28 R's in the Senate voted FOR it...one of them was McCain.
So much for the odoriferous gas bag theory that Senate Democrats "forced" it through.
http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/budget-appropriations/243763-mccain-i-plead-guilty-to-vote-for-sequester
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/09/19/169038/many-in-gop-voted-for-forced-budget.html
http://www.whatthefolly.com/2012/09/17/list-of-174-house-republicans-who-voted-for-sequestration/
Keith's voice is taking on a certain noticeable shrillness as he pleads for you to turn to the dark side and vote for Romney/Ryan.
By your own vote examples, that surely disqualifies that earlier statement that the Republicans in congress "rammed" the sequestration alternative to going bust with no vote to raise the Debt Limit, so the sequestration and the raising of the Debt Limit until after the election were jointly passed, which is what the President and his parties legislators wanted. Nice try but fail blaming it now on a minority of the Republican legislators. When did you ever see 28 Senators and 174 Representatives control the vote on anything, fool!
Uhhh..Keith:
I know that more often than not, reading for comprehension is a skill that consistently eludes your mental grasp, but if you care to review what I said, you won't find any reference(s) to "Republicans in Congress "ramming" the sequestration vote" in any manner. I only cited facts (you should get acquainted with those sometime) as to how many R's actually voted for it, so it wasn't as one-sided as you'd like to portray it to have been.
I'll give you one thing, though...you always seem to consistently win the prize for having the most straw men incinerated. En el fuego, tonto..
Ha Ha Ha! Sir Keith of the Laundry is now telling the that Democrats FORCED through the sequestration bill. Ha Ha Ha! The vote was 174 Republicans 95 Dems for the bill in the house, 66 Republicans and 95 Dems against. That seems like it was the Republicans were the ones who forced it through! Ha Ha Ha!
Here's an article not only describing that vote, but Paul Ryan defending it! Ha Ha Ha!
thehill.com/video/campaign/248337-ryan-defends-vote...
Does it give you a headache because you're always wrong Keith? Perhaps you start reading real news sources instead of tabloid news. You do realize Bigfoot and Batboy aren't really married right? Ha Ha Ha!
All of these things are are quality of life and educational programs or functions that the business community has been lobbying to defund for years.
Just a side bar here. As far as I am aware veterans benefits don't fall under the department of defence they come out of a separate budget. are those subject to "austerity measures" as well? What kind of money could be saved by cutting the whole Dept. of Veterans Affairs? It is a kind of "welfare agency" after all.
This is just another example of the ugly core beliefs of the constituency Mr. Romney is evidently representing. That people without money or influence are good for fighting wars or working in factories but are in the end fundamentally disposable.
Are you out or your mind, Dragoon? Just where do you see any plan to cut the Department of Veterans Affairs budget, or to deny disabled veterans their just and due disability payment? I suggest you look back to see which Presidential candiate addressed the DAV, VFW, and American Legion national conventions this year...(hint, it sure wasn't Obama. he thought it more imporatant to be campaigning on college campuses instead as he alredy had written off the veterans support at the ballot box).