Tuesday, February 26, 2013

The sequester and the austerity brigade

E.J. McMahon says sequester, by the numbers, isn’t a huge deal. (Torch)
Republicans ripped Barack Obama for sounding an alarm over sequester cuts, as negotiations to bring bills to the floor of the U.S. Senate continued. (WP)
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McMahon’s position is the position of the GOPers, teapartiers, and the right-wing yakety-yakers.
In fact, Peggy Noonan, in her felicitous phrasing, writes that Obama is freaking out about the alleged affects of the sequester.
(http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html )
A leading House GOPer told Charlie Rose this morning (CBS Morning News),that spending needs to be cut; and she mentioned one example: spending $2 billion on free cell phones for the disabled.
How sad to be picking on the low income disabled, and the program to give cell phones to be used for emergency and vital communication.
It’s all about austerity; and cutting non-defense fed. spending.
It’s all about reducing the fed. govt. to a size to drown it in a bathtub.
The obsession with austerity is the opposite position that should be guiding our decision-makers.
NYT’s Keynesian economist Paul Krugman recently has repeated his mantra that this fixation on austerity will bring on a second recession in the US; and has already put Europe in recession.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/25/opinion/krugman-austerity-italian-style.html?ref=paulkrugman&_r=0

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