The Diane Rehm Show

"Big debt: Between 2001 and 2010, the Bush tax cuts added $2.6 trillion to the public debt, 50 percent of the total debt accrued during that time. Over the past 10 years, the country has spent more than $400 billion just servicing the debt created by the cuts.

Supply-side failure: Far from paying for themselves with increased economic activity as promised, the tax cuts have depleted the public treasury. Tax collections have plunged to their lowest share of the economy in 60 years"."Mother Jones"

30 years of Supply Side economic ideology is bound to collapse sooner than later. Republicans called this policy WASTEFUL SPENDING just a few months ago,during the elections. Now they want to defend to the death their stupid failed plan.

$400 billion in interest to pay for the Bush tax cuts.How many trillions for the wars? We stuck with a privatized military,whose cost has tripled in the last 10 years.Another failed Republican plan..

I was a "civilian contractor" who used to work at the Tobyhanna Army Depot, the only place that had jobs with good pay in Northeast Pennsylvania, refurbishing military communication equipment.

I was laid off in October 2012. For almost a year previous, there was talk about equipment from overseas already in-storage on premises waiting to be distributed to the repair shops, but no money was ever allocated to the shops for the work. The way the money dried up, it's as if the sequester was predicted early in the year 2012.

Without work, 3rd shift was eliminated, mostly by moving people to 1st shift. Personnel was consolidated to shops that still had work, and they got crowded.

Any remaining contractors are rumored to be laid off by March 31, 2013; I think they numbered around 800 a couple of years ago, and they were whittled down to about 300 by the end of last year.

When many of us were teenagers, we were told that "if we went into electronics, we'd always have a job." I always considered defense electronics to be a "last resort." Now, there is no last resort, anymore. Unemployment Compensation is over, and there's nowhere to go.

Across the isle at the Depot, the civil service workers -- maybe at least half whom are former military, are being offered early retirement, and no one imagined they would ever suffer lay-offs, but there have already been a few, and expectations are for their layoffs to accelerate, too.

The Depot might have been an inefficient elephant riddled with nepotism, cronyism, corruption, incompetence, and sadistic management consistent with soldiers' mentality, but it served well to inject money into the local economy for decades, keeping many lives running. Now, who knows to what extent it's drying up.

[hugs]

Progressivism erodes the self-reliance and personal responsibility of the American people.

Calvin Coolidge

"The individual, instead of working out his own salvation and securing his own freedom by establishing his own economic and moral independence by his own industry and his own self-mastery, tends to throw himself on some vague influence which he denominates society and to hold that in some way responsible for the sufficiency of his support…. This is not local self-government. It is not American. It is not the method which has made this country what it is. We can not maintain the western standard of civilization on that theory. If it is supported at all, it will have to be supported on the principle of individual responsibility."

In the midst of an unemployment crisis with tens of millions out-of-work and our infrastructure crumbling, our idiotic politicians come up with a scheme for gratuitously making another half-million people unemployed. The U.S. needs jobs, jobs, jobs. Our society needs new/rebuilt bridges, highways, schools, electric infrastructure, water infrastructure, and renewable energy.

Our government - a social creation of our own citizens - is NOT like your personal budget. It can print currency to spend into the private sector, to create jobs and grow the economy.  A lot of these people who are worried about the deficit seem to talk about money as if it were some natural resource that will be "used-up" when it's spent.  They think money the government takes in (in the form of taxes) just disappears and is gone permanently after it the government spends it.  Money is just a means of exchanging goods.  

Government takes in the taxes, and then gives the money back to the people again - to pay for infrastructure, to pay Social Security recipients, soldiers, contractors, doctors, teachers, lawyers, police, scientists etc. It doesn’t just vanish into thin air forever.  It’s not consumed like food or burned up like fuel.  It's not put into a paper shredder.  Those people and businesses receive the money and spread it around the economy - exchange it for goods and services from private businesses.   They pay taxes. It's like a circulatory system.

Create jobs, invest in infrastructure, and the economy will grow and reduce the deficit. On the other hand, sequestration is a 21st Century version of bleeding the patient. The results will be similar.

GOV MENT THIS...GOV MENT THAT.... HATE GOV MENT....
END GOV MENT.... GOV MENT CAN`T DO NOTHIN RIGHT...

I would like to remind our T-Party/Republican friends,millions of Americans have died in creating and preserving our GOVERNMENT... That GOV MENT that T-Party/Republicans hate so much has a name... it`s called

The United States of America... somehow they feel compelled to elect politicians whose goal is to break it, or overthrow it..Can`t tell with these folks anyone..

anorlunda wrote: We are told that economists say that the sequester will hurt the economy, but only two months ago we were told that economists said that the tax hike will not hurt the economy.

Huh? What economists were you listening to? Economists and everybody agreed that "Taxmageddon" would have triggered a recession. As will sequestration.

@anna nimitty"
Some truth and some falsehood
"Big debt: Between 2001 and 2010, the Bush tax cuts added $2.6 trillion to the public debt, 50 percent of the total debt accrued during that time. Over the past 10 years, the country has spent more than $400 billion just servicing the debt created by the cuts".
Don't know about the exact figures, but sounds mostly true.
"Supply-side failure: Far from paying for themselves with increased economic activity as promised, the tax cuts have depleted the public treasury."
Patently False. The Bush tax cuts (there were two rounds) INCREASED revenue to the FG, so "supply-side failure" is false. They absolutely DID pay for themselves ... if the Republican Congress that was in power at the time could have stopped spending.
"Tax collections have plunged to their lowest share of the economy in 60 years"."Mother Jones"
Well, yeah. We're in a recession. But trying to link that to the Bush tax cuts is false.
"30 years of Supply Side economic ideology is bound to collapse sooner than later."
Why? You can't defend that statement anna. It's just rhetoric.
When the FG slowss spending, Supply Side economics works. It means more money in the hands of the people to invest whether in markets or their small businesses. It is what creates jobs and wealth. Government spending does not create wealth - it destroys it and enslaves citizens to their government. We're witnessing that today.

You know, when John Boehner says "We've finished with the tax issue—now it's time to get serious and tackle the spending side," he is absolutely right. But the way he says it is rather misleading. It implies that, now that we've raised revenues, we have to cut expenditures. But in the context of the whole fiscal cliff/sequester, that obviously doesn't make sense.

Remember, the fiscal cliff was both tax hikes and spending cuts. Back at the New Year, "Taxmageddon" was averted (dramatic federal tax hikes were prevented)—thus mostly protecting low tax rates, and saving the national economy from certain recession. So, we've finished with the tax issue.

Now it's time to get serious and tackle the spending side. We have to avoid as much of the sequester as is possible (prevent dramatic government spending cuts), maintaining spending and saving the national economy from certain recession.

Right? Now, Johnny, I'm sure Barry will play nice with you if you just play nice with him.

Lets see, President Obama goes golfing, doing nothing about spending cuts, something the Republicans desperately want and that's bad. President Bush starts a war and within a month goes on vacation for two weeks. Which was more important as a symbol of leadership?

The Last Moderate wrote: "prevent dramatic government spending cuts"

2.3% is "dramatic"?

What is a moderate anyway?

I wish all the pundits would stop the talk of Social Security being a drain on the U. S. Treasury. What they don't tell us is that the program wouldn't be a drain if the people in congress had not squandered the money and left treasury notes in the till. It becomes a drain because the treasury notes will, of necessity, have to be repaid to the program.

They stole the money, now they are blaming the recipients for the government deficits. Please, stop the lies about Social Security.

RE 'you should be careful what you ask for'. Cuts in staff at TSA, IRS, etc SHOULDN'T be a bad thing if only the slugs would work with the efficiency and effectiveness that would be required of them in the private sector in order to maintain their jobs. What's doubly troubling is that govt workers are already talking about purposefully working even more slowly than usual to give the impression that the sequester is bad for the public.

These fools on this panel still don't get what Obama is about. He does not want to cut anything, he wants to bring the economy to it's knees to bring about the transformation he desires. A shift away from private enterprise to central planning, a shift away from personal freedom to collective rights.

Yes. He is.