• 288 days Will The ECB Continue To Hike Rates?
  • 288 days Forbes: Aramco Remains Largest Company In The Middle East
  • 290 days Caltech Scientists Succesfully Beam Back Solar Power From Space
  • 690 days Could Crypto Overtake Traditional Investment?
  • 695 days Americans Still Quitting Jobs At Record Pace
  • 696 days FinTech Startups Tapping VC Money for ‘Immigrant Banking’
  • 700 days Is The Dollar Too Strong?
  • 700 days Big Tech Disappoints Investors on Earnings Calls
  • 701 days Fear And Celebration On Twitter as Musk Takes The Reins
  • 702 days China Is Quietly Trying To Distance Itself From Russia
  • 703 days Tech and Internet Giants’ Earnings In Focus After Netflix’s Stinker
  • 707 days Crypto Investors Won Big In 2021
  • 707 days The ‘Metaverse’ Economy Could be Worth $13 Trillion By 2030
  • 708 days Food Prices Are Skyrocketing As Putin’s War Persists
  • 710 days Pentagon Resignations Illustrate Our ‘Commercial’ Defense Dilemma
  • 710 days US Banks Shrug off Nearly $15 Billion In Russian Write-Offs
  • 714 days Cannabis Stocks in Holding Pattern Despite Positive Momentum
  • 715 days Is Musk A Bastion Of Free Speech Or Will His Absolutist Stance Backfire?
  • 715 days Two ETFs That Could Hedge Against Extreme Market Volatility
  • 717 days Are NFTs About To Take Over Gaming?
What's Behind The Global EV Sales Slowdown?

What's Behind The Global EV Sales Slowdown?

An economic slowdown in many…

How Millennials Are Reshaping Real Estate

How Millennials Are Reshaping Real Estate

The real estate market is…

Strong U.S. Dollar Weighs On Blue Chip Earnings

Strong U.S. Dollar Weighs On Blue Chip Earnings

Earnings season is well underway,…

  1. Home
  2. Markets
  3. Other

Spoiled Brat Syndrome

Here we are once again. In spite of $trillion deficits as far as the eye can see, neither Obama nor the Democrats want to do anything about it.

Please consider Obama to Urge Congress to Delay Automatic Spending Cuts

President Barack Obama will urge Congress to postpone automatic spending reductions scheduled to begin March 1 as Senate Democrats debate options for replacing part of the $1.2 trillion in across-the-board cuts.

Obama will ask Congress to delay "deep, indiscriminate cuts to domestic and defense programs" in remarks scheduled for 1:15 p.m. today, according to a White House statement. "Uncertainty around the sequester is already having a negative impact on our economic growth," according to the statement.

"The challenge we face right now is the fact that government spending is completely out of control," Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said yesterday on the Senate floor. "So to focus on a tax of any kind is to miss the point entirely."

In an interview on Bloomberg Television today, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Democrats and the president have been "absent" in working toward fiscal discipline. "All we hear from this president is 'we've got to raise people's taxes.' That's just not the answer," said the Virginia Republican.

Boehner of Ohio and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, both Republicans, have said they expect the full spending cuts to take effect.

While Defense Secretary Leon Panetta once called the automatic cuts a "doomsday mechanism," Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said in a Jan. 29 interview that it is "more likely than unlikely" they will take effect.

Defense Cuts

Defense programs would be cut by 7.3 percent, or $42.7 billion, during the last seven months of fiscal 2013. Non- defense budgets would be trimmed by $42.7 billion.

Many programs that Democrats care most about would be reduced. Obama's Office of Management and Budget said the plan would make reductions of 2 percent to Medicare providers and 7.6 percent to non-defense programs such as temporary assistance for needy families.


Will Republicans Wimp Out Again?

Notice the talk of doomsday cuts even though the war in Afghanistan is winding down and the war in Iraq is over.

Pray tell what's wrong with going back to a level of military spending in 2008, 2004, or even long before that?

What I fully expect is for Republicans to cave in on social spending cuts in return for Democrats caving in on military cuts, effectively kicking the can down the road again.


Cookies, Candy, Spoiled Brats

The political process is similar to the way spoiled mothers treat spoiled brats whining for candy bars and cookies. The brats are of course Republicans (whining for cookies), with Democrats (whining for candy bars).

Cookies represent increased military spending of course, and candy bars represent social spending.

The prudent thing would be for neither brat to get anything because they are seriously obese already. However, the whining babies are willing to placate each other (temporarily forever), and Mother (Obama) is willing to placate both of them to get them to stop whining.

Yet, in the end, after stuffing themselves with more cookies and candy, neither brat will be happy.

Republicans will be upset Democrats got candy bars, and Democrats will be upset Republicans got cookies. Nonetheless, whining for more cookies and candy bars will continue, once again, temporarily forever. Taxpayers who cannot afford the party will ultimately have to pay the bill.

 

Back to homepage

Leave a comment

Leave a comment