federal budget

From the National Women's Law Center's email today:

Did you see the news? Like magic, just before Members of Congress headed home (many on airplanes), they quickly passed a bill to prevent long delays at airports — delays caused by the draconian federal budget cuts known as the "sequester," including furloughs of air traffic controllers. How convenient!

From this experience we learn that Congress actually can act quickly — really, really quickly — if it wants to. So we have a question for you, Congress: What about fixing the rest of the sequester — especially the cuts to essential services for low-income women and their families?

Fired up? Now is the time to tell your Members of Congress to fix the sequester!

Virginia Foxx got an op-ed published in several newspapers in her district a few days ago, hammering Obama and the Democrats on the budget and repeating many of the same talking points that Paul Ryan and Company have been hammering in conservative media the past few days.

If you have some time, call in to the Town Hall on April 15th and give Foxx and her henhouse some grief.

I've also been Googling around a little bit - I have a funny feeling that Foxx or her staff didn't write this op-ed and versions of it are floating around under the bylines of different legislators. If you find proof of this, post something in the comments.

It's time to go to the phones. Again.

Obama budget would cut entitlements in exchange for tax increases

Dave Johnson laid it out in an email:

The Obama budget is going to offer “Grand Bargain” cuts in Social Security and Medicare, hoping to get Republicans to offer tax increases. We are heading into a retirement crisis. The 401K experiment didn’t work. Companies have pulled back on pensions. And the squeeze that has been on regular people for decades means that people also do not have the savings they need to get them through old age. And all the money went to the top. The last thing the country needs is cuts in essential services for the elderly.

"...the economy is running on the fumes of the investments we made in public goods decades ago." -- Prosperity Economics: Building an Economy for All

As the Mongol army swept across the Asian steppes in the 13th century, psychological warfare was one of their most powerful weapons. Looking much like their victims, Mongol spies easily infiltrated towns in the army's path to foment panic. "The Mongols are coming! The Mongols are coming! They kill the women and rape the men! The Mongols are coming!" Just as the Mongols hoped, many towns surrendered without a fight.

Come to think of it, the relentless psychological messaging from Washington sounds a lot like that. Austerity. Fiscal cliff. Debt crisis. America could go the way of Greece. America is broke. Grand Bargain. Surrender Dorothy.

Let's be blunt. Access to health care saves lives. Loss of health care costs lives. The Ryan-Romney budget would cut as many as 30 million Americans off Medicaid--which, by definition, is the health care program available to people who can't afford any other coverage. Analysis of Medicaid coverage's effectiveness in saving lives shows that this would cost about 170,000 lives a year. Put it this way: The Ryan-Romney health care cuts could result in more additional American deaths every year than we've lost in every war since WWII combined.

Shocking? Yes, but you don't have to take my word for it. Here are my sources. Crunch the numbers yourself.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/07/26/how-to-save...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/13/paul-ryans-...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war

Monstrously immoral? That's my opinion.

These days I am more of a reader than writer. I spend my time trying to figure out whether this means I have nothing to say or whether it means nothing I say makes a damn. That said, I have something to say.

Via email

National Priorities Project (NPP) provides you with the numbers you need to keep your readers informed.

President Obama’s proposed $3.7 trillion budget for Fiscal Year 2012 includes cuts and increases for many state-level grants and assistance programs. For instance, North Carolina will receive 64.33% less funding for Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, while funding for the Airport Improvement Program will increase 49.11%.

For other numbers like these, as well as real dollar amounts, see our fully-downloadable data table.

Forty years ago this week an event occurred that changed the history of mankind forever.

An event so monumental that the memory lingers on, even though the venue where the event took place has been, shall we say, “repurposed”.

But we’re not here to talk about the time that Minnesota Twins Manager Billy Martin appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Instead, let’s talk space.

NASA is forever trying to interest the world in space exploration...and forever struggling to come up with the money to get things done.

Well, I’m not a scientist, nor an engineer, and I don’t assemble rocket vehicles...but I am a fake consultant, and if NASA took my advice, I’d bet my fake paycheck that money would be a lot less of a problem.

President Bush has a spending problem.

While proposing another $196 billion for an unpopular war, Bush wants to strip $8.4 million from North Carolina classrooms.

Bush threatened to veto the Labor-HHS-Education bill that the Senate approved last week.

Sign this petition to tell Bush you continue to stand with our children.

Bush and his Republican enablers Elizabeth Dole and Richard Burr favor a draconian budget that would cut education funding for North Carolina and 43 other states.

These misguided cuts could force local communities to find local tax dollars to meet those needs or shortchange their schools.