Sequester

[tschu]

People who are congressman could easily be making much, much more money than that at a private law firm or as business officials. It's not waste - it's adequate compensation for the people who are at the top of their profession. It's only at the 92nd percentile, which actually seems low. Their raises are low, and they cannot give themselves a raise (27th Amendment!) until the next Congress. Given that these people have the power to set their own salaries, they've hardly been greedy. There are TRILLIONS out there elsewhere rather than worrying about a couple of million that are not really the issue.

[Junior]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/03/the-sequester-is-going-to-devastate-us-science-research-for-decades/273925/

 

Less than one percent of the federal budget goes to fund basic science research -- $30.2 billion out of the total of $3.8 trillion President Obama requested in fiscal year 2012. By slashing that fraction even further, the government will achieve short-term savings in millions this year, but the resulting gaps in the innovation pipeline could cost billions of dollars and hurt the national economy for decades to come.

[Junior]

http://www.theatlant...decades/273925/

 

Less than one percent of the federal budget goes to fund basic science research -- $30.2 billion out of the total of $3.8 trillion President Obama requested in fiscal year 2012. By slashing that fraction even further, the government will achieve short-term savings in millions this year, but the resulting gaps in the innovation pipeline could cost billions of dollars and hurt the national economy for decades to come.

 

On a COMPLETELY unrelated note

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/health/deadly-drug-resistant-infections-rise-in-hospitals-report-warns.html?_r=0

 

The bacteria, normally found in the gut, have acquired a lethal trait: they are unscathed by antibiotics, including carbapenems, a group of drugs that are generally considered a last resort. When these resistant germs invade parts of the body where they do not belong, like the bloodstream, lungs or urinary tract, the illness may be untreatable. The death rate from bloodstream infections can reach 50 percent.

 

Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called the organisms “nightmare bacteria” during a telephone news conference, and noted that they could pass their trait for drug resistance — encoded in a scrap of genetic material called a plasmid — along to other bacteria.

[strigori]

People who are congressman could easily be making much, much more money than that at a private law firm or as business officials. It's not waste - it's adequate compensation for the people who are at the top of their profession. It's only at the 92nd percentile, which actually seems low. Their raises are low, and they cannot give themselves a raise (27th Amendment!) until the next Congress. Given that these people have the power to set their own salaries, they've hardly been greedy. There are TRILLIONS out there elsewhere rather than worrying about a couple of million that are not really the issue.

You don't go into 'public service' because of the pay. Though many do for the pay and the added benefits of the after office job markets. Most of the seats are very, very safe (Lee Terry for example, been there for over 15 years and you can count the bills he has written, and been passed, on one hand) So a vote for a pay raise is still a pay raise. The also have automatic'cost of living' increases that take effect unless they vote not to have it happen. To say nothing of the fact that the majority of them are independently wealthy before being elected to office. In fact you would be hard pressed to find any member of congress would was not rather well off before even running for office. Being rich seems to almost be a prerequisite to be elected in this country right now.

 

And again, unless one of the trio of Defense, Medicare or Social security are being chopped, pretty much everything else is chump change. The fuss that gets made over things like public television and radio funding is a good example. But don't touch the benefit package of the idiots who can't seem to even do their jobs. If they worked in a private business the way they 'work' in congress, they would be fired.

[tschu]

Your viewpoint is not a good one.

 

That's the most I can say without getting myself perma-banned. How about we cut some of the massive unnecessary f'ing budget defense. We do not need outposts in every remote Pacific Island and Middle Eastern village. If we slash our defense budget by 12%, Iranian nuclear warheads are not going to start dropping out of the sky. Congress's pay is 0.024% of the budget. If you want to start being less nonsensically outraged at minute details like the already moderate pay of congressmen, maybe you should start looking at the other 99.976% of the budget that we're legitimately wasting on other things.

[Moiraine]

Your viewpoint is not a good one.

 

That's the most I can say without getting myself perma-banned. How about we cut some of the massive unnecessary f'ing budget defense. We do not need outposts in every remote Pacific Island and Middle Eastern village. If we slash our defense budget by 12%, Iranian nuclear warheads are not going to start dropping out of the sky. Congress's pay is 0.024% of the budget. If you want to start being less nonsensically outraged at minute details like the already moderate pay of congressmen, maybe you should start looking at the other 99.976% of the budget that we're legitimately wasting on other things.

 

They'll just cut soldier pay and benefits instead. Just like a corporation.

[tschu]

Your viewpoint is not a good one.

 

That's the most I can say without getting myself perma-banned. How about we cut some of the massive unnecessary f'ing budget defense. We do not need outposts in every remote Pacific Island and Middle Eastern village. If we slash our defense budget by 12%, Iranian nuclear warheads are not going to start dropping out of the sky. Congress's pay is 0.024% of the budget. If you want to start being less nonsensically outraged at minute details like the already moderate pay of congressmen, maybe you should start looking at the other 99.976% of the budget that we're legitimately wasting on other things.

 

They'll just cut soldier pay and benefits instead. Just like a corporation.

 

No, it's not like a corporation. It's not like there are options A) Cut congress's pay or B) Cut soldiers' pay. There are thousands and thousands of other options for cutting spending.

 

 

(Just for a perspective on the small amount of money that people are choosing to quibble over, reducing every congressman's pay by 25% is the same as reducing every single military personnel's pay by 9 dollars a year. 9 dollars.)

[zoogs]

Quibbling/raging at the minute details only serves to continue to distract from where the actual problems lie and how they actually still need to be fixed, no matter how mad at Congress. I suspect there are a lot of people in power, or people who have strong influence over them, who aren't really interested in solving these problems and for them, fanning the flames on the snide side discussions must be a delight.

[strigori]

Your viewpoint is not a good one.

 

That's the most I can say without getting myself perma-banned. How about we cut some of the massive unnecessary f'ing budget defense. We do not need outposts in every remote Pacific Island and Middle Eastern village. If we slash our defense budget by 12%, Iranian nuclear warheads are not going to start dropping out of the sky. Congress's pay is 0.024% of the budget. If you want to start being less nonsensically outraged at minute details like the already moderate pay of congressmen, maybe you should start looking at the other 99.976% of the budget that we're legitimately wasting on other things.

I'm all for massive defense spending. But we have one party calling for increases.... If that party then wants to rage about spending and aim their sights on small time spending like public radio and headstart, then their pay needs to be in the same discussion. Its as much a punitive viewpoint on the collection of imbeciles that are in office right now as anything else. Along with the idealistic view that one does not become a congressman for the money, but for the betterment of the nation.

[Junior]

http://www.slate.com...ter_jcr:content

 

 

Michael Linden of the Center for American Progress has a great policy brief (PDF) out today calling for a reset of the fiscal policy debate in Washington. The core of the argument is the two charts I've reproduced above, showing that the medium-term debt and deficit projects look very different in the spring of 2013 than they did back in 2010 when the "pivot" to deficits began.

 

Some of that is because spending cuts have been enacted. Some of that is because taxes have been raised. Some of that is because those factors have reduced debt service costs. Some of it is that interest rates have been lower than expected. And some of it is that health care spending projections have fallen. There's a whole juicy report to read if you want the details. But the point is that the actual deficit and debt situation is totally different from the situation that obtained at the time the Simpson-Bowles Crew was first unleashed upon the universe, and yet the political dialogue on the subject doesn't seem to have changed at all.