The Sequester

[Neptune]

The Sequester (http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/02/21/balanced-plan-avert-sequester-and-reduce-deficit)


In eight days, harmful automatic cuts are slated to take effect, threatening hundreds of thousands of jobs, and cutting vital services for children, seniors, people with mental illness and our men and women in uniform.

Only Congress can avoid this self-inflicted wound to our economy and middle class families, and the only thing standing in the way of a solution today is Congressional Republicans’ refusal to even consider closing tax loopholes that benefit wealthy Americans and well-connected corporations. The President and Congressional Democrats have put forward solutions to avoid these cuts and allow time for both sides to work on a long-term, balanced solution to our deficit challenges.

Thoughts?

[Fartingo]

Is the GOP being a pain in the ass? Yes.
Are they intentionally driving us over an (artificial) 'economic cliff' as Huffington Post put it? Not really.

More political games so both sides can polarize each other. Democrats knew the Republicans would be irrationally stubborn about this, Republicans knew they would be forced to choose between ideology and peace and quiet, and I knew that both parties are going to play chicken with each other until they pull a 'deal' out of their asses that patches one hole whilst ignoring so many others.

SSDD

[Sniper]

Is the GOP being a pain in the ass? Yes.
Are they intentionally driving us over an (artificial) 'economic cliff' as Huffington Post put it? Not really.

More political games so both sides can polarize each other. Democrats knew the Republicans would be irrationally stubborn about this, Republicans knew they would be forced to choose between ideology and peace and quiet, and I knew that both parties are going to play chicken with each other until they pull a 'deal' out of their asses that patches one hole whilst ignoring so many others.

SSDD

Pretty much this.

[bigt4203]

The real issue here is the fact that no budget has been passed for the last x number of years because of xyz. My command has been talking about the budget cuts when the sequester happens and since I'm currently at a training command, we should be the last on the list to be affected. However, our operational forces will be taking a hit in many areas because apparently whenever the government needs money, they just cut it from the military because we obviously don't need it.

[Dirk]

The reality is that we are spending WAY more than we take in and that mean we need to reduce spending or we are going to keep building up debt. Eventualy we either have to spend so much on interest that we wont be able to afford to spend anyway or we will have to get out of debt by rapid devaluation of the currency (inflation). So we really have to get out of debt and that means stuff is going to have to be cut. Now the question is will they cut wasteful things or will seriously harmfull cuts be made? Hope as few people are hurt by this as possible.

[Danthrax]

The military doesn't need, it's far too big for it's own good. But the cuts we need to make in the military are with the administrative staff and excess that doesn't really do much. We could probably cut the advertising campaigns and Nascar sponsorships as well. We also don't need a standing army bigger than the next 10 countries combined military. But that's just my opinion.

[Caution]

The military doesn't need, it's far too big for it's own good. But the cuts we need to make in the military are with the administrative staff and excess that doesn't really do much. We could probably cut the advertising campaigns and Nascar sponsorships as well. We also don't need a standing army bigger than the next 10 countries combined military. But that's just my opinion.


If you're referring to the actual military itself, it's a bit hard to just "cut" people rapidly as we're all on a contract neither us nor the government can just void lol, otherwise they would. I'm all for a bit of a reduced ARMY (Marines is cutting down to like 170k, army 1.something million), but trying to do it dramatically at once is retarded, piss poor planning and just fucks people that want to serve their country. Most of you guys don't see it obviously, but I see a lot of "cuts" first hand. Higher ups still do the same shit - bombs are still made, planes are flown around uselessly and expensively, resources are drained pointlessly over and over again. It's the lower ranking guys that get fucked, my shop doesn't even get toilet paper this entire year. That's a bit ridiculous. Like I said the biggest thing most don't get is that military "cuts" aren't as cut and dry as most try to play them out as. But yeah, I agree, why the fuck do we have advertising commercials when we are trying to cut down drastically.

As far as civilian contractors go, I'm all for cutting some of them. A lot of them have the most retarded fucking billets in the entire world.

[Caution]

And just found out that more "cuts" have been made, they've stopped funding college for now while being in. See, the lower ranks get fucked. People don't realize that pretty much all we have to rely on ("we" as in the average joe blow one-time-enlistee) are benefits. We get paid jack shit, our benefits is where we make up for it.

[bigt4203]

If you're referring to the actual military itself, it's a bit hard to just "cut" people rapidly as we're all on a contract neither us nor the government can just void lol, otherwise they would. I'm all for a bit of a reduced ARMY (Marines is cutting down to like 170k, army 1.something million), but trying to do it dramatically at once is retarded, piss poor planning and just fucks people that want to serve their country. Most of you guys don't see it obviously, but I see a lot of "cuts" first hand. Higher ups still do the same shit - bombs are still made, planes are flown around uselessly and expensively, resources are drained pointlessly over and over again. It's the lower ranking guys that get fucked, my shop doesn't even get toilet paper this entire year. That's a bit ridiculous. Like I said the biggest thing most don't get is that military "cuts" aren't as cut and dry as most try to play them out as. But yeah, I agree, why the fuck do we have advertising commercials when we are trying to cut down drastically.

As far as civilian contractors go, I'm all for cutting some of them. A lot of them have the most retarded fucking billets in the entire world.

This. I agree the lower end will get hit harder in terms of benefits. I do want to point out that a lot of the squadrons are cutting back on flight hours and a lot of ships are not deploying anymore due to the limited budget. But yeah, a lot of the civilian contractors have some of the most pointless jobs ever and they strut around base thinking they are some Admiral or Captain.

The issue is instead of taking the money for the sequester (or just fixing the damn budget) from some other pointless government program that people abuse (i.e. foodstamps), they take it from the military and other federal employees. I bet if they reformed all the government benefit programs, they could find a good amount of money that people have been abusing in the past.

[Caution]

CMC dropped an ALCON message about this and said congress has voted to decrease spending in the marine corps by 1.4 billion this year, then an additional 2 billion each year to follow.


One F35 costs 237 million, and an osprey 69 million. Fuck college though, lets just spend more money on aircraft we don't fucking need. In 2010 the army got 245 billion, the Air Force 172 billion, the navy 150 billion, and the marine corps got fucking 29 billion. But hey lets just buy pointless fucking stealth bombers.