So now that it looks like we probably are headed over the cliff, some important things to consider

[politicaljunkie41910]

Personnally I wish that the White House would allow all the Bush Tax Cuts to expire rather than try and negotiate with the people who would like to see him fail. There is still time for President Obama to take back the situation.

President Obama should end the negotiations with the Republicans and let the tax cuts expire. At the same time he should announce that he will let the Sequestration proceed according to plan. Since half the spending cuts are destined for the Defense Dept, this would cause an immediate reaction from the Defense Contractors to pressure the Republicans to reach a deal with the President to prevent the Defense cuts from going into affect. This would put the President in a position to negotiate from a position of strength, rather than the position of weakness he has been negotiating from by 'begging' the Repugnants to please come to the negotiation table, and to please not hold the debt ceiling hostage, and to please reauthorize the unemployment extensions, etc, etc, etc.

The White House and Democrats should also insist on an expiration date on any continuation of the tax cuts (which will now be known as the Obama Tax Cuts) in case we ever need to raise taxes at a later date once the economy recovers. Otherwise, no future Congress will ever have the balls to raise taxes, EVER. At current tax rates, we don't create enough revenue even before the effects of the 2008 collapsed economy, and while an eventual full recovery will help stop the bleeding, it won't be enough to pay for all the goods and services people demand of the federal government. So we will continue to incur deficits even after the economy recovers and the wars eventually end, unless we continue to make drastic cuts to spending.

[Igel]

1. You assume that all the DOD contractor pressure would be on (R).

I don't share your assumption.

You also seem to assume that most of the cuts will apply to contractors. It won't affect, we've been told, signed contracts with no opt-out provision.

Pretty much every state has circulating the predicted/potential effects of the sequestration on school funding--Title I and SpEd. It'll hit there, too, with the added problem that school districts are bound by law to provide the required accommodations and modifications for their SpEd students. In other words, if they lose two teachers, one SpEd and one gen ed, a minute later they'll have found a way of replacing the SpEd teacher and suddenly be short two gen ed teachers.

The problem is that everybody's guessing. There was a deadline to be met, showing how the sequestration would be implemented dept. by dept. in the executive branch. That deadline was in October 2012. Somebody missed the deadline that he agreed to when he signed the Budget Control Act into law, and it's made for a lot of turmoil, guessing, fear, and frustration. Good for leverage--everybody assumes the worst because, well, that's possible. Bad for anybody who cares about people, and, well, it's a deadline missed by somebody who claims you really need to stick to deadlines.

[triplepoint]

2. Let's Light This Candle!

.
.
.