What the heck is a Sequester anyways? and whos fault is it?

So if you watched the State of the Union last night you likely heard President Obama come out against the something called the sequester.

"And that's why Democrats, Republicans, business leaders, and economists have already said that these cuts -- known here in Washington as "the sequester'' -- are a really bad idea. Now, some in this Congress have proposed preventing only the defense cuts by making even bigger cuts to things like education and job training, Medicare and Social Security benefits. That idea is even worse."

And if you watched the republican response to the State of the Union you heard Marco Rubio come out indirectly and without naming them, against half the sequester.

"And tonight, he [Obama] even criticized us for refusing to raise taxes to delay military cuts – cuts that were his idea in the first place."

And then if you happened to be willing to go to crazy town to watch Rand Paul's response on far right wing websites you heard him come out in favor of the sequester.

"Not only should the sequester stand, many pundits say the sequester really needs to be at least $4 trillion to avoid another downgrade of America’s credit rating."

now none of these 3 men stand alone. Obama's case was generally speaking, the democratic case, Rubios was half the republican party, Paul the other half of the republican party, and some of the democrats who dont agree with Obama's assessment such as Howard Dean.

Now with all due respect (on this issue anyways) to Senator Paul, there really isnt much to say about his comments, with two exceptions, so I'm just gonna get to those, and then never really mention him again.

First Paul is telling the truth, as is the president.....and the weird thing, they are quoting the same economists. See the full context from the economists, is that in the short term the sequester is a horrible idea and in the long term is a great idea, the question being should we take the short term pain for long term gain.

Now not being an economist, I'm not even gonna try to answer that question, one of the reasons I'm not going to be mentioning Paul again, I'm more concerned with the stupidity of how we got here and not is it actually a good idea short term vs long term (since I'm not smart enough to know).

But the second comment on Senator Paul is this. Despite his claims the Sequester should stand, he voted AGAINST it. So that might be a little bit of a credibility issue for him, its a great idea now because the economy is bad, but wasnt a few months ago when the economy was worse.

Nor is he alone in that by the way, Senator Rubio ALSO voted against the Sequester he is now partiality in favor of.

Now to explain Rubio's position we have to go back to exactly what the Sequester is and how we got here....and how at least half of Rubio's comments are a lie.

So you remember the fiscal cliff? how about the debt celing crisis in 2011? believe it or BOTH of those are the sequester.

In fact the Debt Celing was the cause of the sequester. I've covered this before, so I'm just gonna do the short version this time in case you missed it but:

the Tea Party decided it was a good idea not to pay our bills (which is what the debt ceiling is) so basically in order to put pressure on them to deal/not kill the country President Obama and John Bohener came up with a plan to force the tea party to act sane: create a cut so massive in the sacred cows of both sides (defense and entitlements) that is passage would be destructive to both party's therefore both sides had a good reason to figure something out to prevent this from happening, which was supposed to happen last year with the super committee.

problem is, many of the tea party are functional anarchists and the rest of the GOP dont realize the balanced approach they themselves want isnt balanced without taxes.

So nothing happened. and the Sequester looked like it was going into effect last january at the same time the Bush Tax Cuts, Payroll tax cuts and a host of other tax cuts were expiring.

Now to their credit this time the GOP accepted the tax reality and raised some taxes. The problem this time was in exchange for that, the GOP wanted their sacred cow (defense spending) removed for the sequester and the whole burden shifted to entitlement programs.

Which didnt happen, so congress just voted to move the sequester back a bit. which brings up to where we are now.

And again the sides are the same as they were in January, the Democrats are willing to get rid of the sequester if they get what they consider a balanced approach, tax increases, some defense cuts, and some entitlement cuts.

And the republicans want no tax cuts, increased defense spending and all from entitlements.

So of course most people figure the Sequester is going to hit.

Which creates a bit of a problem cause not surprisingly the Sequester, which was designed to be unpopular is very very unpopular (Paul and Dean aside).

Now if you notice in the two comments I highlighted Obama just said the sequester sucks and Rubio said its sucks and its Obama's fault.

This brings us to what will likely be THE critical sequester issue in Washington (at least publicly  if they cant get a deal, whos gonna get blamed?

the GOP got blamed for the debt ceiling, and the fiscal cliff, and got almost no credit when they were avoided. So they cant afford to take another hit.

But in a usual display of GOP Stupid the day the Sequester was announced John Boehner went on TV to talk about the discussions, and when talking about the outcome

"When you look at this final agreement that we came to with the white House, I got 98 percent of what I wanted. I'm pretty happy."

Thats a little bit of a problem when it turns out 98% of what you wanted has turned into the sequester (which to be fair was never supposed to happen) which everyone hates.

Its even more awkward when you look at the vote totals. In the house the idea passed 269 to 161.

of the 269 "Yes" votes, 174 of them were Republican, compared to only 95 democrats. So the majority who voted yes were republican.

And one of those yes votes was GOP Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, another was Speaker John Boehner, a 3rd was GOP majority leader Eric Cantor, also Kevin McCarthy the GOP Whip (so 3rd in the leadership behind Boehner and Cantor) voted yes.

of the 161 "No" votes 95 were democrats, 66 were republican. SO the majority who voted no were democrats.

Also thanks to 3 abstentions by the Democrats, the majority of their caucus (95+3) did NOT vote for the bill. Unlike the GOP

To be fair things look a little better in the Senate where the GOP provided 19 of the 26 No votes.

The problem is there were 47 Republicans. So less than half the Republicans in the Senate voted no. (same is true for the Democrats). And again the GOP that voted yes included the entire leadership in the Senate.


So when Marco Rubio says "this was the presidents idea" he's lying. And to be fair all the democratic leadership voted yes too so had Obama said this was the Republican's fault. But he didnt and he hasnt.

And thats going to be the facts that shape the future of this. The democrats are going to tell you "this sucks" the GOP is going to tell you "this sucks and they did it" and the Dem's are going to fire back with all the things I laid out before you, which the GOP will have no counter for.

So it looks like when the shit hits the fan, more of it is going to get sprayed onto the GOP then the Dem's,


But it still doesn't address the real issue of the Sequester, which is this: Who the fuck thought it was logical that if you guys cant agree now, you can agree in X number of months if you dont change anything? Also how is it the ONLY thing you all can agree on is that you can agree on something later.

I mean what the fuck kinda warped logic is that?

Honestly at this Point our best hope is to hope Rand Paul is right....and given that he's usually a crackpot, we are probably all fucked.

But hey at least now you now HOW your getting fucked.