Homeless in Arizona

I suspect the only way to fix the system of American government is to have another revolution. In my life time things have only gotten worse. And I think they will continue to get worse.

I think Thomas Jefferson's quote says it all:

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Of course to the Homeland Security thugs who read my emails and web pages I certainly am not suggesting that people commit crimes or overthrow the government. I am just saying the American government will just continue to get worse.

Source

Democrats, Republicans play blame game on spending cuts

by Erin Kelly - Sept. 22, 2012 11:12 PM

Republic Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - Congress headed home last week to campaign, delaying until after the Nov. 6 general election any deal to stop $500 billion in defense cuts scheduled to begin early next year.

Some lawmakers and analysts hope that a last-minute deal can still be reached in the lame-duck session after the election. But, for now, Republicans and Democrats are focusing more on assigning blame for the political quagmire that could devastate Arizona's defense industry if the cuts take effect on Jan. 2.

At stake for Arizona is the future of an industry that employs nearly 40,000 people, contributes $5 billion to the gross state product and pays more than $4 billion in wages, according to a September 2010 report by the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University.

If Congress fails to reach a deal to avoid the automatic cuts, a George Mason University study predicts it could lead to tens of thousands of job losses in Arizona and potentially cost almost $5 billion in lost gross state product over the next decade.

"At the moment, most members of Congress are more interested in using this as an election issue than in solving the problem," said Stan Collender, a former staffer for the House and Senate budget committees and national director of financial communications for Qorvis Communications, a Washington public-relations agency that represents some defense contractors. "They're kind of ignoring the extraordinarily negative impact on the economy if these cuts go into effect."

Republicans blame President Barack Obama and the Democratic-run Senate for the possible 10 percent cut in defense spending and the job losses that could result.

Democrats say Republicans are trying to run from the fact that most of them voted for the legislation that set the clock in motion for the cuts.

"Bottom line: Both parties made this bed and then got into it together," said Peter Singer, a defense and foreign-policy analyst at the Brookings Institution. "And now, neither of them will give up their share of the covers, saying it's the other that has to give in all the way."

Congress last year passed the Budget Control Act of 2011, which raised the debt ceiling to prevent the federal government from defaulting on its loans and destroying its credit rating. It also cut $2.2 trillion in federal spending over the next decade.

Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl, both Republicans, voted for the bill, along with Republican Rep. Paul Gosar. Republican Reps. Jeff Flake, Trent Franks, Ben Quayle and David Schweikert voted against the legislation, as did Democratic Reps. Raul Grijalva and Ed Pastor. Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords did not vote.

The complicated bill, which Obama signed into law, also created a congressional supercommittee of six Republicans and six Democrats who were charged with trying to reach a consensus by the end of 2011 on how to cut up to $1.5 trillion more in federal spending to reduce the deficit.

The committee, which included Kyl, failed to reach an agreement. Democrats said they would cut spending only if Republicans agreed to raise taxes for the wealthy. Republicans rejected any new taxes on "job creators" and called on Democrats to make deeper cuts in non-defense spending.

The committee's failure triggered a provision in the bill known as "sequestration," which requires automatic, across-the-board cuts of about $1 trillion in federal spending, divided equally among defense and non-defense programs, such as education, transportation and research.

The cuts will begin on Jan. 2 and continue for nine years unless Congress does something to stop its own legislation from taking effect.

"It was a dumb idea from the beginning," said James Carafano, a defense and homeland-security expert at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "Congress basically said, 'We can't decide what we're going to do, so we're going to create a deal that we all think is horrible and then bump the negotiating to a committee.' I don't know how anybody thought they were going to get a good result out of this."

Political liability

The bill has now turned into a political liability for members of Congress in Arizona and throughout the nation as defense-industry executives and local elected officials decry the cuts, saying they could devastate local communities trying to recover from the recession.

In Arizona, the defense industry represents about 2 percent of the state's total gross domestic product and about 2 percent of its total employment, according to figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and Bureau of Labor Statistics.

McCain has been leading other Republican senators on a kind of "sequestration tour," warning of potential job losses in the defense industry and calling on Obama to lead the way to a solution.

"We call on the President -- as Commander in Chief -- to lead an immediate bipartisan effort to agree on an alternative to sequestration and prevent a crisis that Secretary of Defense (Leon) Panetta has said will 'inflict severe damage to our national defense for generations,' " McCain said this month in a joint statement with Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire.

Grijalva and other Democrats say McCain is being hypocritical in blaming others for a problem caused by legislation he supported.

Obama said Republican leaders in Congress are standing in the way of a solution by refusing to consider tax increases for the wealthy as part of what he calls a "balanced" approach to reducing the deficit.

"The only thing that's standing in the way of us getting this done right now is the unwillingness on the part of some members of Congress, and folks in the Republican Party, to give up on some tax breaks for people like me who don't need them," Obama said in a recent interview with WVEC-TV in Norfolk, Va.

House Republicans have rushed to pass two recent bills that attempt to stop the automatic defense cuts by replacing them with cuts to food stamps and other social programs.

"We've already stepped up in the House and offered our legislation," Schweikert said. "It would be really nice to find a partner in the Senate that was even willing to move a piece of legislation."

But Democrats say the two GOP bills are little more than an election-year ploy that Republicans know will go nowhere in the Senate.

Democrats say Republicans want to thwart defense cuts by increasing cuts to the non-military programs already scheduled to be reduced if the automatic cuts go into effect Jan. 2.

If sequestration takes effect, it will mean fewer FBI agents and federal prosecutors, fewer air-traffic controllers, and less money for scientific research, food inspections, HIV testing and education programs, according to White House officials.

"I understand that Raytheon and Boeing and other big defense companies have lobbyists, and the kid in third grade at Roosevelt Elementary doesn't have that," said Grijalva, who voted against last year's Budget Control Act. "But that doesn't make it fair."

In the end, both sides must give up something if they truly want to halt the automatic cuts, Singer said.

"The only way you get the deal the nation needs, to avoid the very thing they (members of Congress) say they want to avoid, is if both entitlement programs and tax reform and revenues are on the table," he said. "The numbers don't get you anywhere else. Compromise was what our founding fathers envisioned, and (current lawmakers) are doing the opposite."

Even the Arizona House members who voted against the Budget Control Act and its automatic cuts are not absolved of all responsibility for the current crisis, Singer said.

He said they helped spark the crisis by refusing to compromise on the debt-ceiling issue to begin with.

Gosar won his recent Republican primary despite being attacked by the conservative Club for Growth for voting for the Budget Control Act.

"Members who say, 'Don't look at me, I voted against the bill,' are pathetic," Gosar said. "They kicked the can down the road on spending when our nation's financial future was at stake."

Americans may have to wait for a solution until a new Congress convenes in January, said Collender, who served as director of federal budget policy for accounting firms Price Waterhouse and Touche Ross and was president of the Budget Research Group, a private Washington consulting organization. He also wrote "The Guide to the Federal Budget" and writes a weekly budget column for Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper.

"We're talking like the government turns into a pumpkin on Jan. 2, but we don't get $55 billion in defense cuts on the very first day of the year," Collender said. "Congress would still have time to do something." Hope for action

Flake and Pastor said they are hopeful that a compromise will ultimately be reached before the end of this year when Congress meets in a lame-duck session that is tentatively slated for mid-November through mid-December.

At the very least, Flake said, Congress may pass an extension that would delay the start of the automatic cuts for several months or a year to give the new Congress time to craft a deal.

If lawmakers wait until a new Congress convenes, the damage will have already begun as defense companies make cutbacks in an atmosphere of uncertainty, Flake said.

"We've got no choice," Flake said. "We've got to do something in the lame duck."

Pastor said members who are retiring or who lose their seats in the Nov. 6 election may be willing to compromise "for the good of the country."

"My belief is that nobody in the House or Senate really wants sequestration," Pastor said. "We created it through legislation, and we can repeal it. So let's do it."