How Sequestration Will Affect Federal Research Agencies 277
carmendrahl writes "Unless Congress and the White House act before March 1, the automatic across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester will kick in. And federal agencies are bracing for the fiscal impact. Federal agencies and the White House are releasing details about how these cuts will affect their operations. If the cuts take effect, expect fewer inspections to the food supply, cuts to programs that support cleanups at former nuclear plants, and plenty of researcher layoffs, among other things."
Mmm... (Score:2)
Monthly dance (Score:3, Insightful)
You know they will somehow extend this hard deadline, just like the last.. three times? I lost count.
Re:Monthly dance (Score:5, Insightful)
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Weak metaphor, mostly because the US has no issue raising money, alas our rates are at record lows. Additionally, comparing government finances to personal finances is completely assinine and shows incredible ignorance on the subject.
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Wrong. The interest rates are low to stimulate the economy. If the Fed raised rates back to historic levels costs of borrowing for private organizations would go up and the economy would slow.
But don't let facts get in the way of GOVERNMENT BAD WHARRGARBL.
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You're operating under the misapprehension that the Free Market (peace be upon it) is the only thing that sets interest rates in the US. It's not; the Federal Reserve board sets at least one key rate.
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Re:Monthly dance (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh? First, there is generally a 2-3 year delay between inflationary influences and the start of inflation actually hitting the market. So most of it won't have hit the market yet anyway. But some. Have you checked your grocery bill lately? I don't know about yours, but mine has been up somewhere around 50% over just the last couple of years. And short-term commodities like that are usually the first to see a major hit.
My grocery bill has been more stable; your personal anecdotes (and mine) may not be indicative of overall economic trends. Maybe inflation is about to go through the roof? Nonetheless, folks with billions to invest are still volunteering to buy long-term treasury bonds at worse interest than my checking account. Not that billionaire investors can't be terribly wrong.
If inflation isn't significantly above the government-claimed "approximately 2%", why do they want to raise the minimum wage 24%? Just an arbitrary figure in a misguided attempt to "legislate prosperity"? Or an attempt to cover actual costs of living the government lied about? Either one is bad news.
Maybe because the minimum wage is down by more than 50% from when it was introduced many decades ago? You realize that proposed 24% increases aren't just covering for one year of stagnant wages?
Investors always have been "pretty sure". They were sure of that in 1929... that's why the markets were at an all-time high, just before the big crash. They were just as sure in 1999-2000. And they were just as sure in 2007-2008. Look at the YouTube clips from both periods, of people saying "Come on in! The economy has never been better! The market has never been higher!"
And investors holding government bonds during the recent crash did quite well. Investments based on the private sector tanked, but no one lost a cent on Treasury bonds. The private sector is notoriously unstable; the US government has historically managed to produce a rather stable currency with well-defined slow inflation, which is why investors are eager to buy (at interest rates that lose to inflation) in economically unstable times.
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I have friends around the country and they have all been complaining about high grocery prices. So while your mileage may vary, I have good evidence that this is far from a local phenomenon. (Not to mention that I buy much of my food at nation-wide franchise chains. On average, their prices are not likely to vary a lot from one region to another.)
I didn't say prices weren't rising at all, but your claim of ~50% over the last two years is quite a jump --- at that scale, it's unlikely to be largely the result of government monetary policies, which are going to come much closer to 5% than 25% per year. National coordinated price rises across big-chain franchises is probably more an indication of the expected results of oligopolistic pricing in a non-competitive market.
It's up 24% from the last time it was raised, 6 years ago, to $7.25. That is significantly different from government's claimed inflation rates. Your argument that it is "down 50%" just reinforces what I was saying: inflation is higher than what government has been claiming. But anybody with half a brain who has looked at how the government calculates it knows that anyway.
My reference point for ~50%, about which I should have been more clear, was the minim
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"If people thought they were too risky, they wouldn't buy. Our interest rates are low because of the safety of the almight dollar, not because our government unilaterally dicates that the private market will buy them."
Absolute nonsense.
First, in case you hadn't noticed, they HAVE begun to cease buying. Remember the flap about China raising its valuation compared to the dollar? They haven't done that very strongly, simply because it would devalue their own large U.S. investments. But it has nothing to do with trust or safety, and our domestic interest rates have absolutely nothing directly to do with the money market.
Second, it's the Fed that sets interest rates within the U.S., not the money market. And while the F
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Budgeting sucks. No one is going to be happy. Cuts have to happen across the board. Mom gets netflix, Dad gets a focus, Johnny gets New Balance and suzy gets Target jeans that rip on their own. Everyone is unhappy, but at leas
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How terrible - we go back to spending levels of 2011! It was like we were a third world then!
Not only that but if Government spending, which is ultimately wealth taken out of the economy after the productive parts of the economy produced it, is so bloody important that we're all going to starve and die if it is lost then that is both extremely sad and scary.
Chaos (Score:3)
Sheer bloody idiots. They couldn't get their act together to get sensible budgets, so now we end up with this. Shame it's not tied into Politicians' pay, but they're probably getting their cuts of the pie from the people who will benefit from all this.
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Shame it's not tied into Politicians' pay,
Actually, their pay (Congress/Senate) is supposed to be withheld until the sequestration ends.
If this is the end of the civilized world, as some are fearmongering it, why was Obama out on a golf vacation instead of working on the budget? Does this show how seriously he takes it? Sequestration was his idea after all.
Re:Chaos (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, their pay (Congress/Senate) is supposed to be withheld until the sequestration ends.
Unlike the rest of federal employees who won't get their pay back after sequestration ends, congressmen/senators will.
If this is the end of the civilized world, as some are fearmongering it, why was Obama out on a golf vacation instead of working on the budget?
It is the legislative branch who has failed to act, not the executive.
Does this show how seriously he takes it? Sequestration was his idea after all.
Though Obama proposed the idea, 174 House Republicans, a majority of the majority, joined 95 Democrats to pass the plan. So Republicans arguably own the sequester as much as Obama, if not more so, since Obama never wanted to link spending cuts to the debt ceiling.
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oh bullshit. Stop regurgitating the party line. Though, you're probably getting paid to do so.
The level of cuts are miniscule, so minor as to be meaningless. The whole story is propaganda to try and shore up Obama's numbers and lay the blame for the entirety of the failed economy on someone else. That's right, let's blame the minority in the legislature, not the leader. There's no way the tiny level of spending cuts are going to impact every single person working for the government. It's complete bullshit a
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The credit.is available though (not saying we.should borrow more, just saying you should speak truth).
of course the response to not being able to borrow very well could be printing (well casting) more money (see trillion dollar coin).
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Also, the fed stated that they wouldn't accept trillion dollar coins. That's the hard part about allowing an independent organization to be in control of the fiat currency system.
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The "credit" is only available because the government has the ability to raise its own limits. Until the day when everyone stops buying bonds. I'm saying that we should stop needing to sell bonds before they become worthless.
The interest on government bonds is less than inflation and they still sell well, which is an indication that the market is quite far from considering them worthless.
The other thing that the low rates suggests is that lowering taxes wouldn't create a flood of private sector investments. Right now there's a metric fuckton of money tied on bonds that lose money every day and no one is in a rush to employ it more productively so there isn't a good reason to believe that tax cut money would end up funding innov
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The pay withholding is just a whole 'hey, look at how determined we are to make this right!' political ploy. That part of the law is unconstitutional (directly violates the 27th amendment), so it would never be upheld under scrutiny. Congress has no power to affect their own pay until the next session comes into play (so if you don't like them getting a huge raise, you can vote in different people).
While I agree it's not the end of the civilized world, it is a sad state of affairs when the only way to get
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If this is the end of the civilized world, as some are fearmongering it, why was Obama out on a golf vacation instead of working on the budget? Does this show how seriously he takes it?
Work on? What work is there to be done on it? More sitting in a room with Boehner et al with everyones arms folded glaring at each other? Suggesting a few more times that they cut each other's pet projects? Suggest again that taxes be raised, and say again "no! We took a sacred blood oath to Norquist!"
There's no work to be done besides convincing the other that they're not going to cave. Going on vacation might be the best way to show republicans he's not budging. Though it seems like terrible PR
Re:Chaos (Score:5, Funny)
"expect fewer inspections to the food supply..."
Over here in Europe we have tons of Horse-Lasagne that we can finally drop off then.
Re:Chaos (Score:4, Funny)
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Same old same old (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever a government department is threatened with cuts, they announce that they'll cut front-line staff and not overpaid managers or worthless paper-pushers. That's why government spending expands forever until the economy collapses.
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Re:Same old same old (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit. Private companies, when faced with budget shortfalls, make across the board budget cuts all the time. It's a very common tactic.
This fear mongering is making me sick. $80 billion in cuts is going to "cripple" our $3.4 Trillion government? They are they lying their asses off.
Re:Same old same old (Score:5, Informative)
From a David Casey online newsletter, courtesy of a friend's blog:
Lesson #1
US Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000
New debt: $1,650,000,000,000
National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
Recent budget cuts: $38,500,000,000
Let’s now remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household budget:
* Annual family income: $21,700
* Money the family spent: $38,200
* New debt on the credit card: $16,500
* Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
* Total budget cuts so far: $385
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Sorry, that should be Doug Casey. The URL for his piece is http://www.caseyresearch.com/cdd/lessons-argentine [caseyresearch.com], the table is near the end.
I got it from http://howardleeharkness.com/2013/01/how-did-we-get-in-this-mess/ [howardleeharkness.com]. He's an old friend. Note that he corrected one of Casey's numbers, where Casey slipped a decimal point.
Re:Same old same old (Score:5, Interesting)
The analogy is interesting, but it fails in one crucial aspect. A family doesn't really own the money that they spend - their resources are necessarily limited as they do not own the source of the means of exchange (namely the money). If a family was to operate like the government does, it wouldn't last very long.
However, by definition, a government is there to regulate the means of exchange, and thus is not limited to a budget in the same sense as a family is. The government can print money for instance, or regulate its worth by modifying the exchange rate with other economies, or even mandating fixed pricing on certain goods like gasoline. The government doesn't pay bills in the same way that a family does. So the question of a budget is not applicable in the same sense as for a family.
So it might be an interesting analogy, but fails at the most crucial point - a government is responsible for the value of the currency, a family merely uses the currency of the government.
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That the government is responsible for the currency only makes their current way of doing things even more reprehensible.
Every time the government borrows they are shrinking the value of the dollars in our pockets.
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So it might be an interesting analogy, but fails at the most crucial point - a government is responsible for the value of the currency, a family merely uses the currency of the government.
A gov't has limited control of the "value" of currency.
If the gov't is printing money like there's no tomorrow, it triggers this effect called "hyperinflation" - and the value of money drops based both on the current amount in the market, and the expectation it will continue to drop in value.
The gov't *can* use inflation pay its own bills; but it does tremendous economic harm to society because it really boils down to an obfuscated wealth tax. (That hits the poor and middle class the most)
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since when have Libertarians applauded corporate bailouts? Since never. The Libertarians didn't start the various bailout programs, the liberal republicans, and liberal democrats did.
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Similarly worthless school boards cut busses first to irritate the hell out of parents who then have to drive their kids.
Every dollar is somebody's sob story, or some job we will all die without. Yet somehow we didn't have people dying in the streets a few years ago spending a trillion a year less.
There are publicly-funded universities where the number of positions not related to teaching are over 50%. These are sinecure positions, a wonderful word borrowed from midieval religion to describe graft to feed
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Whenever a government department is threatened with cuts, they announce that they'll cut front-line staff and not overpaid managers or worthless paper-pushers. That's why government spending expands forever until the economy collapses.
That's not how it works at all. First almost everyone is furloughed, that is, gets unpaid holidays. DoD will furlough their 800,000 civilian employees one day a week starting April 1. So 800,000 will loose 20% of their pay! Other Departments/Agencies my furlough more or less days per week or delay until after April 1. Of course employees don't spend what they don't get and the deductions for health plans and retirement stay the same. AFAIK the furloughs can last only 22 workdays or 30 calendar days and
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It should be noted: “relative to the private sector, the federal workforce is less than half the size it was back in the 1950s and 1960s”
Does the "federal workforce" reffered to in that article reffer only to people who work directly for the government? Afaict there has been a trend away from the government directly paying people to do work for them and towards the government paying contractors to do it.
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the bizarre part to this (Score:4, Informative)
Still, looking at the list, there's a number of worthy budget cuts, such as the oversized federal law enforcement, small business loans, and various "government service" rent seeking. And one really has a hard time arguing against a 13% cut back in defense spending.
As I see it, the problem with sequestering isn't that it cuts government services, but that by its nature it can't target less effective spending or any mandatory spending at all.
Re:the bizarre part to this (Score:4, Informative)
The way this is working out, the secretaries and/or chiefs of each major department are going to make the choice of what is going to get cut within their department and thats surely better than having congress micromanage the cuts. The only time this isnt the case is with earmarked spending, and fuck most of that spending anyways.
This is the only way cuts should be done, and cuts are much needed pretty much everywhere. Every department aside from NASA has ballooned out of control, and even in NASA's case some of the spending is highly dubious ($8 billion on the Webb telescope? Some serious, possibly criminal, inefficiency is happening here.)
I think we would all like to see the DoD budget cut a lot more, but than in no way means that the DoE, DoA, DHS, FDA,
Re:the bizarre part to this (Score:5, Insightful)
Congress shouln't micromanage these cuts, but isn't it their job to make sure the secretaries cut the right things in the right way, and set them straight if they don't? (Not sure how that works; I am not from the US But don't worry, we're in the same boat over here).
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The problem, as pointed out by others, is that the department heads tend to cut the wrong things, deliberately.
There is a difference between conjecture and "pointing out." Most of these departments have never seen a budget cut through their entire history, where the oft-used term "cut" has historically meant a reduction in the rate of increase of their budgets rather than any actual budget cut.
So as far as I can tell, you are just conjecturing that these departments will "cut the wrong things", that they have never actually been forced to cut before.
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So as far as I can tell, you are just conjecturing that these departments will "cut the wrong things", that they have never actually been forced to cut before.
I have to agree with JaredOfEuropa. It's a classic move. To give an example related to what you mentioned earlier, NASA has on occasion threatened to cut more important or high profile programs in order to save their funding. For example, they've threatened to end Hubble Space Telescope on more than one occasion.
Re:the bizarre part to this (Score:5, Informative)
Keep that in mind when the Air Force says 2/3 of its aircraft would be grounded in months. Note that they don't mention laying off the valets who serve the general officers, or closing golf courses for senior officers, or getting rid of some of the fleet of executive jets that the Air Force maintains. It's called a "gold watch" in the military, but it's basically identical to the Washington Monument defense.
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No, that's the President's responsibility - he is, after all, head of the Executive branch of government.
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All that is required to counteract this tactic is to anticipate it and be willing to fire bureaucrats. How does this sound:
Year 1: Budget cut is announced, director of agency embarks on campaign of collective punishment against the public. There is public outcry.
Year 2: Congress refuses to restore budget to pre-cut levels. Director continues his punitive war on productivity instead of cleaning house.
Year 3:
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> the 70 man junket to GarbageCon'13
Can you imagine the cosplay outfits? Yuck.
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still spending 2 1/2 times more than Clinton (Score:3)
It's widely believed that Clinton-style budgets were good. If you believe that, you should ask for sequestration times fifteen, cutting the projected budget by 60% to get back to Clinton-like spending.
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It's worth noting that all this discomfort only results in a drop of $85 billion.
As someone else said in this thread:
It is a scam.
They make sure the thing people care about get cut first.
The things that really should be cut never get touched.
We all get cowed into giving them more and more money.
See how much of an automatic cut your senators pay gets.
No, wait they still get an automatic raise
It's structured for the very purpose of making 'budget cuts' seem like a waste of time. You'll never get to the creamy center because there's so much hard, baked on crud you've got to scrape off first - like a boiled lobster which is covered in coral growth.
This is why we'll never see a de-funding of things like the IRS, anything else related to core government operations, or "governing body" luxuries. Why do we not talk about cutting money from Health and Human Services?
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How do you figure? Military spending was less than $300 billion in 2000 and in the proposed 2013 budget is $672 billion. It's shrunk slightly since last year, but certainly not on a downward trend o
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By law, the cuts must be equally applied to each program, project, and activity within an account, thereby not allowing agencies to use their discretion.
You seem to be implicitly assuming that there is XY% of each program within every agency that can be trivially cut.
You would be the hero of Washington if you could write down a list of all the people that can be fired without reducing each program's ability to meet its goals.
This is why we'll never see a de-funding of things like the IRS, anything else related to core government operations, or "governing body" luxuries. Why do we not talk about cutting money from Health and Human Services? Why do we not talk about defunding the Social Security Administration (even though the bulk of the funding to the SSA doesn't even make it to recipients of SS?)
Holy fucking shit. Who the hell defunds the IRS?
Do you have another suggestion on h
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Still, looking at the list, there's a number of worthy budget cuts, such as the oversized federal law enforcement, small business loans, and various "government service" rent seeking. And one really has a hard time arguing against a 13% cut back in defense spending.
Except that cutting spending now is like applying leeches to a sick patient. You cut spending when the economy is healthy to promote action by the private sector. You increase spending when the economy is unhealthy to backstop the potential for long term unemployment, which can ruin entire generations. An across-the-board spending cut to almost any government agency will do far more harm than good, but research--because it draws so heavily on international talent--is the most vulnerable.
After nearly a deca
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Except that cutting spending now is like applying leeches to a sick patient. You cut spending when the economy is healthy to promote action by the private sector.
Better hurry and get in your time machine and go back to warn Presidents Coolidge and Harding that their ~46% cut in Federal spending won't really kick off the "roaring '20s" and end the post-WW1 recession of 1920-21.
Strat
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Except that cutting spending now is like applying leeches to a sick patient. You cut spending when the economy is healthy to promote action by the private sector.
Better hurry and get in your time machine and go back to warn Presidents Coolidge and Harding that their ~46% cut in Federal spending won't really kick off the "roaring '20s" and end the post-WW1 recession of 1920-21.
Strat
You're comparing a 7-month recession to the meltdown of the entire global economy? Alright, then why didn't the end of the Iraq war lead to booming economy like WWII? I mean, if we're making false equivalencies... At any rate it was Coolidge that slashed spending and taxes after he took office 1923, when the economy was going gangbusters thanks in large part to the automobile and electrification, which was exactly the right time to cut; the economy was healthy and taxes were still stuck at high war-time lev
Re:the bizarre part to this (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe cutting welfare for scientists isn't the best choice for first round budget trimming, but that budget does have to go down at some point.
Welfare? Are you high? Investments in research consistently yield the highest returns of any form of investment because they generate the technology and IP that drives the entire modern economy, including keeping people healthy and living longer. Why do you think the DoD invests so much in research? It's because it produces technology that directly benefits every aspect of the military. Besides, welfare implies a handout in place of money that would otherwise be earned; i) scientists don't pocket that money, they use it to hire people (i.e., to "create jobs") and to purchase necessary equipment/infrastructure--it is definition of stimulative and ii) where else are you supposed to get $1 million to do fundamental research? Private companies and philanthropic organizations (and Defense) fund specific research goals that are near to technological application, not the zillions of person-hours of basic research on which they were built.
If there is anything that a sane, rational government should spend money on, it is scientific research. And this isn't "the first round" of cuts for science, which have been under assault by Congress for years, but flies under the radar because ordinary people can't be bothered to see the connection between the plummeting quality and quantity of STEM in the US and research funding.
Not to mention that the entire annual budget for the NSF is ~$8 billion, which is about how much money was just up and lost, in cash, in Iraq. The Pentagon probably blows $8 billion on toilet paper in a year.
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Furthermore, this budget cut takes us back to the federal spending level of, what, 2011? Was our country in such horrible shape a couple of years ago before we spent even more?
It's a scam. (Score:5, Insightful)
They make sure the thing people care about get cut first.
The things that really should be cut never get touched.
We all get cowed into giving them more and more money.
See how much of an automatic cut your senators pay gets.
No, wait they still get an automatic raise
Makes me crazy.
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TSA/HL (Score:4, Interesting)
So when do they disband the TSA and Fatherland^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Homeland security?
Standard threat to core services (Score:2)
Great Time For Other Countries (Score:2)
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More likely we just ship the current Chinese et al H1B holders home.
How were all these things paid for? (Score:5, Informative)
Just a few years ago, the budget was 2/3 of what it is now, so how were food inspections paid for then?
Most people don't realize that this big deficit spending problem started when the $787B "one time stimulus" became part of the baseline budget and was re-spent (and then some) year after year after year on the biggest government expansion ever seen on this Earth. That $787B is STILL being spent over and over again.
Bond Bubble Ben is still printing Bernanke Bucks at a rate of about $1T/year as well, because the FED is the only entity willing to buy new US debt anymore.
When are Americans going to wake up and realize that you can't spend money you don't have on things you neither want nor need and expect to come out ahead at the end of the day?
I guess "as long as I'm getting mine" is the new American Dream.
Here are some gross, as in disgusting, numbers for US Government Spending:
2006: 2655.1B
2007: 2728.7B
2008: 2982.5B
2009: 3517.7B
2010: 3456.2B
2011: 3598.1B
2001: 1862.8B
If you take the 2001 spending figure and adjust it for inflation, it is 2411B, so in 2011 dollars we're spending 1186B more than we were in 2001.
1.2T in government growth, people. That's 49%. And that's just government growth at the federal level. Government is taking fully 50% more money from us (and our kids, and their kids, and probably also their kids after that) than they were 10 years ago.
Sources:
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/HistoricalBudgetData.xls [cbo.gov]
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt [bls.gov]
Re:How were all these things paid for? (Score:4, Interesting)
Now be intellectually honest and admit a bunch of that money increase is simply that black spending is now not removed from the books like it was in Bush' time. Once you add black spending in, the amount spent as a % of GDP has been dropping.
Re:How were all these things paid for? (Score:5, Interesting)
Dude, we're borrowing almost 2x the entire defense department.
We are borrowing 90% of an entire aircraft carrier, $4 billion, per day.
You could cancel the entire DOD, and tax 100% of the income of the rich, and you would still be $100 billion a year short.
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First of all, as the sibling notes, those budget numbers don't include Bush's war budgets, which were designated as a "supplemental" budget. Bush's budgets were much higher than published. And 2001 was still at the height of the dot-com bubble, when the economy was very strong.
And the economy is still relatively weak. Ask most economists; during a recession, do you cut spending, or increase spending to stimulate the economy? Most would agree that deficit spending is necessary to prevent a bigger crash.
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"How could we still be in a recession? We're still stimulating it!"
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The majority of the budget deficit and increase in spending can be blamed on 4 major items:
1. The war in iraq
2. Bush era tax cuts
3. Financial collapse and related stimulus spending
4. Ever increasing health care costs
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24editorial_graph2/24editorial_graph2-popup.gif [nytimes.com]
This isn't a democratic only spending spree though they're to blame as well. I'd say more blame could be heaped on the government for poor decisions on which risks/investments are worth
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There is some additional growth in govt and spending, particularly in the security arena that I'd be all for cutting dramatically (I'm looking at you DHS). However, a bigger issue is that the economy is still recovering, so tax revenues are still low.
This article explains it decently (and has original image I linked):
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24sun4.html [nytimes.com]
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Funny that before the 2009 budget year, the wars in Iraq and Afganistan were not part of the federal budget. Every year since 2001, they were part of a separate "emergency" spending bill. The current president thought that was not proper, and put them into the actual defense budget.
Well I guess the H1B visa holders can go home (Score:2)
Sounds like plenty of American engineers will be looking for work.
Research is a stupid place to cut money (Score:2)
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Well, had you been keeping up with events, you would know that the cuts are basically across the board, not just focused on R&D.
The entire concept was a blunt instrument that was meant to be too draconian and indiscriminate to even consider going into effect. Well, we see how that worked.
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Well, had you been keeping up with events, you would know that the cuts are basically across the board, not just focused on R&D.
I am well aware of that. However this summary is talking about how the budget sequestration will affect research agencies, so I wanted to point out what an epically stupid idea it is to cut research funding at any point. A few things are distinct to the research funding agencies that cannot be said about other federal agencies:
Not $85 billion (Score:5, Informative)
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Phony spending cut, phony panic (Score:4, Insightful)
They aren't really cutting spending. Spending will still increase, just not as much as they wanted. And for that we get to listen to the Ruling Class whine and moan and act all theatrical about what a terrible panic will ensue because they can't overspend as much as they want.
What a load of bullshit.
And what a load of idiots we are when we let them get away with it. Any program manager who cuts anything critical instead of his own paycheck should be fired immediatly without recourse. And any politician who plays the false panic card during the next few months should get a nice present come next primary season - a challenger who won't sit and take all the bullshit that'll get thrown around.
On the positive side (Score:2)
Folks aren't out rioting in the streets over these cuts like they did in Athens, Madrid, London, Paris....
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Can't cut $41B out of a $3.5T budget? (Score:2)
If the elected officials can't do this then they should resign.
Rightfully killing the F35 would fix all the DODs obligations. Raising the retirement age would fix other budget issues.
The real figure is now $44B (Score:3)
per the most recent CBO estimates. The total budget is $4T. Anybody who is crying tears over any part of the federal government losing a whopping 1% of its budget really needs to re-examine where they are coming from. How many individuals and families deal with far larger swings in income on a weekly basis? How many people have had to abruptly make swift changes to their personal outlays because they or another family member has lost a job? Become ill?
Worse still, are these even real cuts? Or are they just slowing the rate of increase in the growth of spending?
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Yeah, just another Goth article about cutting.
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He understands it just fine, he's using scare tactics to make political hay
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Right, because living on the dole is sooooooo much better than becoming wealthy. I should stop working right now, give up my car, live in a crime ridden neighborhood, have no access to healthcare, eat crap food, and barely survive, just to NOT be taxed. You've convinced me!
Look, idiot, first of all, the wealthy currently pay LESS taxes than the middle class. I'm really, really, really FREAKING tired of hearing rich bastards complain that that their taxes are going to go up and that somehow raising your taxe