[kenberg]

Back in 2011, the idea behind the sequester was that it was so stupid that everyone would realize an alternative would have to be found. That's what was said then, at least as I recall the stated rationale. Everyone would just have to come to agree on a better alternative. It would appear that all parties involved seriously underestimated their own incompetence.

People who rise to high national office should really make some sort of effort to not embarrass the country.

And I suppose it doesn't matter, but "sequester" is something of a strange term for an automatic budget cut. When you sequester a jury you don't shoot one of the members. It seems that there will always be a job for those who can come up with words that disguise what is actually being done.

[PassedOut]

kenberg, on 2013-March-01, 06:33, said:

Back in 2011, the idea behind the sequester was that it was so stupid that everyone would realize an alternative would have to be found. That's what was said then, at least as I recall the stated rationale. Everyone would just have to come to agree on a better alternative. It would appear that all partied involved seriously underestimated their own incompetence.

People who rise to high national office should really make some sort of effort to not embarrass the country.

And I suppose it doesn't matter, but "sequester" is something of a strange term for an automatic budget cut. When you sequester a jury you don't shoot one of the members. It seems that there will always be a job for those who can come up with words that disguise what is actually being done.

Agree with all of this. I guess now we'll see how the actual effects stack up against the predictions.

[billw55]

"Sequester" bugs me too. Just trying to make it sound like something it isn't.

Admit I don't entirely understand why everyone seems to thinks spending cuts are automatically bad. Everyone seems to like the idea of a blanaced budget, and few seem to like the idea of doing it solely with tax increases. Logic would seem to dictate ...

[kenberg]

i expect that we need to cut some spending. It is perhaps even necessary for some of it to be done crudely. But...

Some years back Maryland had some budget problems. The faculty was given "furlough days". The name, of course, was a joke. If you taught MWF classes your furlough days were scheduled for Tuesdays and Thursdays, and vice versa. Or the furlough days would be scheduled during the spring break. In theory, we could refuse to do research on our furlough days. In practice, not if you wanted a raise next year. Basically we did exactly what we did without the furlough, we just got paid less for doing it.

OK, that's for faculty. Most of us realize that an academic career is not the path to riches. We would like to be paid what was promised, but if the state has problems, we can adjust. Once in a while. Briefly. But they are supposed to find a better solution than some pseudo furlough.

In the current case as I understand it, and I doubt anyone actually does understand it, some office workers with five day a week jobs will be furloughed every fifth day. A long time back (1960) I worked for NASA. I worked hard every day of my five day week, and I frequently worked overtime on weekends because things needed to be done, I was decent at my job, and I needed the money. Under this scheme, I would be sent home every Friday? What do they have in mind here?

No doubt there is money spent that needs to not be spent. It's a shame that this fact cannot be addressed rationally.

[y66]

Ryan Lizza has a story about Eric Cantor and divisions within his party that make negotiations impossible in this week's New Yorker. Unfortunately, Cantor seems to think his party has a PR problem, not a substance problem.

It looks like Boehner has decided to stop negotiating with Obama and punt to the Senate for further action. There is joy in the conservative part of Mudville.

[andrei]

Due to the sequester 170,000,000 jobs might be lost (this is too funny not to be mentioned)

[y66]

kenberg, on 2013-March-01, 08:59, said:

No doubt there is money spent that needs to not be spent. It's a shame that this fact cannot be addressed rationally.

Bruce Bartlett has some suggestions for more rational ways to think about government spending.

Quote

One solution to this problem would be to have a capital budget that segregates government investment spending from consumption spending. Virtually all the states do this already. Conservatives who routinely defend a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, on the grounds that the states must balance their budgets annually, appear to be unaware that such requirements apply only to operating budgets, excluding capital outlays.

Quote

Many economists say they believe that the best thing the federal government can do to raise the long-term economic growth rate is increase infrastructure spending. It would have the double benefit of mobilizing idle resources, especially unemployed workers, while low interest rates permit capital projects to be financed very cheaply.

One main barrier to achieving this double benefit is the confusion between investment spending and consumption spending, which is distorted by the way the budget is presented and the way we calculate saving.

[kenberg]

andrei, on 2013-March-01, 09:18, said:

Due to the sequester 170,000,000 jobs might be lost (this is too funny not to be mentioned)

math is hard----Barbie

[barmar]

kenberg, on 2013-March-01, 06:33, said:

And I suppose it doesn't matter, but "sequester" is something of a strange term for an automatic budget cut. When you sequester a jury you don't shoot one of the members. It seems that there will always be a job for those who can come up with words that disguise what is actually being done.

It's actually an existing financial term. From the Apple Dictionary application:

2 take legal possession of (assets) until a debt has been paid or other claims have been met : the power of courts to sequester the assets of unions.
• take forcible possession of (something); confiscate : compensation for Jewish property sequestered by the Libyan regime.
• legally place (the property of a bankrupt) in the hands of a trustee for division among the creditors : [as adj. ] ( sequestered) a trustee in a sequestered estate.

And this definition, not the one that applies to juries, seems to be closer to the etymology:

ORIGIN late Middle English : from Old French sequestrer or late Latin sequestrare ‘commit for safekeeping,’ from Latin sequester ‘trustee.’

[y66]

billw55, on 2013-March-01, 07:35, said:

"Sequester" bugs me too. Just trying to make it sound like something it isn't.

Admit I don't entirely understand why everyone seems to thinks spending cuts are automatically bad. Everyone seems to like the idea of a blanaced budget, and few seem to like the idea of doing it solely with tax increases. Logic would seem to dictate ...

Would that be Austerion logic?

[barmar]

kenberg, on 2013-March-01, 06:33, said:

People who rise to high national office should really make some sort of effort to not embarrass the country.

Yeah, wouldn't that be nice?

But we live in a world where high political officials frequently get caught in personal or political scandals. How many scandals has Silvio Berlusconi been involved in, yet he's still a serious contender in Italy's parliamentary election.

Allowing politics to trump public policy is just more of the same.

[kenberg]

barmar, on 2013-March-01, 17:34, said:

It's actually an existing financial term. From the Apple Dictionary application:

2 take legal possession of (assets) until a debt has been paid or other claims have been met : the power of courts to sequester the assets of unions.
• take forcible possession of (something); confiscate : compensation for Jewish property sequestered by the Libyan regime.
• legally place (the property of a bankrupt) in the hands of a trustee for division among the creditors : [as adj. ] ( sequestered) a trustee in a sequestered estate.

And this definition, not the one that applies to juries, seems to be closer to the etymology:

ORIGIN late Middle English : from Old French sequestrer or late Latin sequestrare 'commit for safekeeping,' from Latin sequester 'trustee.'

As with juries, the dictionary meaning here involves taking something, an asset or a jury member, and safeguarding it, presumably for later use of some sort. In the example from the dictionary, there are assets that are, for the moment, unavailable to the unoinn. The implication is that after legal issues have been sorted out, the assets will become available to someone, quite possibly the union, but definitely to someone. I would have no trouble with the term if pay were being sequestered with the intention or at least the possibility of eventually releasing it to the workers. I might have trouble with the action, but not with the term. But as I understand it, no funds are being held in some sort of escrow. The salaries will simply disappear. And whether we are speaking of juries or union assets or worker's pay, the dictionary definition does not seem to encompass disappearance.

Ay any rate, reduction would seem to be a better choice of words than sequester, except that people understand what it means for their pay to be reduced, and they might not, at first, understand what it means for their pay to be sequestered, and lack of clarity seems to be a major goal.

[mike777]

Ken, yes I believe that is what is happening. We are putting aside 85B so we can spend it later. We will need it if there is say a hurricane or a flood or a wind storm. I would be shocked if Congress does not spend it before the year is out.

I fully expect there will be some unknown shock to the system that needs 85B to help out.

[kenberg]

It appears that my dislike of "sequester' is shared:


From the Post:
http://www.washingto...ry.html?hpid=z1

Quote

even if that means allowing the across-the-board cuts, known as the sequester, to continue.

On page 5 another reporter refers to "automatic cuts".


Either "automatic cuts" or, I think better, "across-the board-cuts" seems preferable to "sequester". But again,saying that this would be preferable presumes a desire for clarity. Politicians rarely wish to be clear, and particularly not in the current situation.

[y66]

On the lighter side ... Gail Collins and David Brooks talk about the sequester thing:

Quote

Gail Collins: David, I’ve been pretty calm about all the fiscal-cliff crises, but now I’m really getting ticked off. I hate this sequester thing.

David Brooks: I’ve been admiring your steady nerves during all this. You’ve been like Obi-Wan Kenobi staring down Darth Vader. I’ve been more jittery, like Woody Allen on a first date, with Harry Reid in the role of Mariel Hemingway.

Gail: Wow, it may take me awhile to get past that image.

But we’re talking sequester. You know what makes me angriest? All these cliffs make government more inefficient and wasteful. The people who run the various federal agencies are spending all their time figuring out contingencies for the next crisis — how they can spend 1 percent less next month, but then maybe 1 percent more or 2 percent less the month after that. They can’t plan for anything else.

David: That’s nothing. To me, there are two big problems. The first is that a huge chunk of the cuts go to discretionary programs that make up a sliver of the budget, while almost none of the cuts come out of Medicare. As if we needed another piece of legislation that transfers even more wealth from the young to the old.

Plus, I’m a conservative, so I believe in deliberation. The sequester outlaws deliberation, and yet somehow people who call themselves conservative are embracing it.

Gail: In theory, the folks who rail about government waste should be the most worried about this, but many of them couldn’t care less. They don’t want government programs to be good. They just want to make them go away.

David: My message to Republicans: Never talk about domestic discretionary programs. They’re not driving the deficit, and cutting them only makes Republicans look like corporate greedheads. Focus on entitlements.

Gail: Who do you want to blame for this mess? As our fellow columnist Bill Keller argued the other day, President Obama would be in a much stronger position politically if he’d used the election campaign to highlight the specifics in his own deficit-cutting plan beyond tax hikes for the rich. But Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine and The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein have been making the case that Republicans simply don’t want to make a deal. If the president agrees to their demands, they just change the terms.

David: I do agree that only the president can really frame the debate, and he ran a small-bore campaign and so does not have the mandate to send the country off on a different course. I also don’t understand the long term Democratic project. After you run out of rich people to tax, which may have already happened, where are you going to get the money to support the programs you like? Milton Friedman once fantasized that government would become a check-writing machine. It would just write the checks and give up on making social policy. Democrats are bringing Friedman’s fantasy to fruition.

Gail: I would argue that we have a long, long way to go before there’s any danger of taxing the rich out of their richness.

But this blame thing is pretty wearying. Do you think it’d be possible to dump it all on Windows 8? I really hate Windows 8.

David: I feel sorry for each successive Windows system. On the other hand I really love the Taxi app Uber. You can order a car on your phone and watch on the map as it comes to your house. I can’t tell you how happy this makes me.

Gail: Do you think they could do a sequester app? You could see the cuts invading your neighborhood – there go five teachers, here comes the line at the local airport security, stretching into the parking lot. It could have a little feature that makes your phone vibrate when somebody gets a furlough notice within 10 blocks of your current location.

But about the current crisis: Let’s work out a grand bargain. I always enjoy doing that with you. I’ll go first and say that the goal should be half tax revenue and half spending cuts.

David: You’ve lost me already. International experience suggests a 3 to 1 cuts-to-revenue ratio produces the most debt reduction. That’s why Obama embraced the 2.5 to 3 to 1 ratio last term. My plan is simple. I propose a progressive consumption tax, a lower corporate tax, means-testing of Medicare and chain CPI to reduce Social Security. Easy as pie.

Gail: During our extremely civilized negotiations, I suspect I will be prepared to meet you at two-ish to one.

As far as Social Security goes, I don’t believe it’s an imminent problem, and I’d rather leave it alone. But in the spirit of this enterprise, I’ll give you a Social Security cut. You can have that change in the consumer price index. It’ll reduce the increase in payouts over the long run and save a lot of money. But in return, I’d want to fiddle with the basic formula so we can protect the recipients who have no other income.

David: You’ve got a deal.

Gail: If only we ran the world. What about Medicare?

David: I hear some people say that health care inflation is in permanent decline and that will solve a lot of our problems. Other experts vehemently disagree, saying that if you look at the history of health care costs, there are always these pauses before costs shoot up again. I suspect that will be true as long as there’s fee-for-service and the incentives are what they are.

Gail: We could do a whole lot more to reform the system if the Republicans would stop yelling “death panels!” every time the president tries to control costs. But moving on — I’ll let you reduce Medicare benefits for the wealthier recipients if you’ll allow all government health care programs to limit the prices they pay for prescription drugs, the way other countries do.

David: I reserve the right to back out on that if I think it will hurt innovation. The rest of the world piggybacks on our research, but we should still keep doing it.

Gail: Maybe we could compromise by letting Medicare refuse to pay for expensive drugs when there’s a less costly alternative that works just as well.

And of course, as part of our bargain, we’ll ditch the sequester. Stupid sequester.

David: At least it will allow us to find out what’s on the other side of the reductio ad absurdum. Once you’ve done the stupidest possible thing, how do you do something even dumber? It forces us to be creative.

Gail: Like a law requiring the population to give up wearing socks if the deficit isn’t cut in half by 2020? Can’t wait to see what son of sequester looks like.

Meanwhile, in the real world at the end of the month there’s another cliff. It looks as if Congress is going to kick the can down the road with a continuing resolution – which just means agreeing to keep doing whatever we’ve been doing for a little while longer, even though nobody really likes it.

David: But that’s what 90 percent of government policy is all about.

Gail: You know, I really miss sex scandals. They’re generally colorful. They almost never mean anything over the long run. And while they’re going on, the people who actually keep the government running are let alone to go about their business. Good old sex scandals.

David: I am definitely hoping Mark Sanford wins his House race, which I call the Gail Collins Full Employment Act.

[kenberg]

I have never really understood the whole Apps thing, but I like the idea of a sequester App as outlined by Gail. And bringing back sex scandals in place of sequesters also has merit. There actually is quite a bit of similarity. Flying off to Rio or wherever to meet a babe is described as hiking the Appalachia trail. Laying off teachers and air traffic controllers is described as a sequester.

Hey honey, I have to work late at the sequester, don't wait up.

[blackshoe]

Our politicians might benefit from reading David Weber's Honorverse stories. The United States is well on the way to become the People's Republic of Haven who, early in the story line, started what they expected to be a Short Victorious War intended to keep the Dolists at bay for at least a little while longer. They lost.

I'd rather see us in the role of the Star Kingdom of Manticore, but I don't see that coming to pass.