Boehner wants Obama to help stop automatic defense cuts

[Cali_Democrat]

Boehner: Help stop defense cuts
By SEUNG MIN KIM | 12/1/11 3:20 PM EST

Speaker John Boehner wants President Barack Obama to jump in and prevent the Pentagon from getting slammed with hundreds of billions in budget cuts set to go into effect thanks to the failure of the deficit supercommittee.

Saying “no one really wants to go there” on the automatic cuts to defense and domestic programs, Boehner said Obama has the responsibility to work with lawmakers to find a way around these automatic cuts to defense spending.

He’s the commander –in-chief,” Boehner told reporters Thursday. “He knows what those cuts mean to the military and so I frankly believe that Congress still must work with the president to find a solution to our long-term debt.”

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has repeatedly warned of the danger of those cuts to the nation’s armed forces, and many congressional defense hawks have started to working on measures to roll back the budget cuts to the Pentagon.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/69552.html

[jaxx]

1. Obstruction brought this on.

<..> If congressional Republicans want to avoid a veto and are serious about avoiding a costly government shutdown and preventing the uncertainty that a shutdown would bring to our markets and our economy, they will stop attempting to re-litigate the August agreement and abandon ideological stunts. With only weeks before Congress plans to head home and several critical deadlines looming for programs that matter to Americans, we hope Republicans in Congress choose to transcend party differences and pass funding legislation that is right for the country and that the President can sign.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog

[DocMac]

20. Very well said! n/t

[polichick]

2. Boo hoo, Boner. :(

[Enrique]

3. then why did he make the deal?

remember, he got 98% of what he wanted? That was about this very deal. Now he's wanting to take back the 2% he didn't get?

[Cali_Democrat]

5. Republicans always want 100%

That's how they operate.

[MurrayDelph]

29. Because, to a Republican, bipartisan means

"do it our way, and we'll blame you when it fails"

(This is in my auto-fill history)

[Tx4obama]

4. Looks like Boehner has forgotten that The House passed the bill with the auto-cuts

and Boehner is the leader in the House :)

Boehner is an asshole, he never has helped President Obama with anything Obama wanted Boehners help with.

[DCBob]

6. Ha! Sorry Boehner.. you had your chance.

Clearly the Dems have the upper hand here.. hope they play their cards right.

[customerserviceguy]

16. You hope for a lot

Boner will use Panetta to hammer the President on this. Democratic members of Congress who have heavy defense spending in their states/districts will add to the pressure, too.

[Cali_Democrat]

19. Yup

The pressure will be enormous...unlike anything Obama has ever seen.

[DCBob]

24. Perhaps but practically everyone knows..

..these cuts are not going to have much impact on our ability to protect our national secutiry and wage war. We are so far ahead of any other nation on earth these cuts will be insignificant. The President can hold the line on these cuts and not really take much of risk.. from a pure national security POV.

[DocMac]

21. Panetta better remember how he got there.

Does everyone Pres. Obama appoints turn their back on him? WTF?

Hell, I can't tell if Obama wants this man to act this way or if he is being pimp slapped.

[DCBob]

23. Panetta had to make those public statements decrying the cuts since he is SoD.

I am sure privately he and POTUS are on the same page. But yes there will be pressure from Congress members who's states will be adversely affected.. but that always happens. There will be deals to get them on board.

[sofa king]

25. Think that through for a minute.

The Republicans were already bought and paid for, yet they severely damaged one of their most important funding-and-voter bases, the defense industry.

Now, the Republicans in the House owe their masters the return of that funding, and the defense industry can threaten to withhold further campaign funding for Republicans until they get that defense industry funding restored.

Furthermore, Senate Republicans are totally irrelevant. Their only remaining power in that legislative body is further delaying the restoration of defense industry funding--exactly the opposite of what is required of them.

The issue is further complicated by the fact that since the Republicans have behaved so dishonestly in Congress over recent years, Senator Reid's current policy is that Republican-authored bills are automatically killed. And any funding that is restored will naturally be balanced with deep cuts in other sectors that traditionally back Republicans, like subsidies to oil companies.

So the smart money is going to start flowing in the opposite direction, to the Democrats, because they're the only ones who have the ability to restore the funding... in an election year.

Republicans who want to get on board with that are going to have to give President Obama and Dems in Congress a big, wet kiss, and pretty much anything else they want. Their behavior has to improve, but chances are it won't improve enough to save their asses in the next election, where the money and the votes will be heavily weighted against them.

[customerserviceguy]

31. That's an interesting take on it, and I hope you're right

but I'm thinking that the Rethugs have already promised their friends in the MIC that they would never let those cuts go through, it was just a ploy to throttle domestic spending.

If pressure cannot be applied through Senate Democrats and the SoD, then Repukes will use that as a reason to usher in an entirely-Repuke government, and it won't matter to the MIC that they had strayed on the way to getting there. Besides, I suspect most pro-defense spending Democratic Senators are going to lose their seats, no matter what, and they will not be worth the defense contractors' spending money on in 2012.

[sofa king]

33. You're definitely in the ballpark by focusing on the Senate.

At least I think so. This next Senate election was a real problem for President Obama and the Dems, a result of the backlash against the Bush Administration in 2006. Thirty-three Senators are up for reelection (or are trying to transfer the office to someone else from their party); only ten are Republicans.

Usually, when your opponent is defending two or more seats for every one you have, that's the time to go on the attack. But the GOP has already been so decisively outmaneuvered in the past year that the Democrats are clearly focusing on gaining seats in the Senate in the next election.

The key was playing the rope-a-dope with the tax cut extensions. To get their rich-man's handout, Senate Republicans had to hold the tax cuts for the middle class hostage. As a result, every Republican Senator up for reelection wound up voting against the middle-class tax cuts. And by agreeing to the expiration date of January, 2013, Senate Republicans will never get a chance to redeem themselves in this term, and they are going to be skewered by pitiless attack ads for that for the next eleven months.

Voters support letting tax cuts for the rich expire in overwhelming numbers--at least 70% of all voters support it. So next year, Harry Reid is going to split a tax cut extension into two votes, one for the rich, and one for everyone else. Republicans will be forced to once again hold middle-class tax cuts hostage by filibustering, in an election year; or, they can defy their benefactors and vote in favor of both bills. President Obama will only sign one of them, leaving the GOP asking for handouts from the people they just screwed.

Now the issue is further complicated by the fact that Republicans have contradictory objectives: restoring half a trillion dollars to the defense industry, while simultaneously trying to ensure that the restoration of those funds can't be paid for by increased tax revenue, while thumping the old lie that Republicans are fiscally responsible.

And of course, the defense industry will start buttering the Democratic bread just in time for campaign season, because Senate Republicans can only filibuster and delay in the Senate (the exact opposite of what is needed to restore the funds)--they just don't have the votes to do anything proactive, and because they've been such assholes, all Republican-authored bills are now automatically killed or voted down in the Senate.

I'm still sticking with the guess I offered at the beginning of this year, that five out of those ten Republican seats will be lost, with few to no pickups from the Democratic side.

All of the above is merely an intermediate step toward the objective of gaining a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate in 2015. Then the Dems will have a two-year window to do all the things we wish they could do now. For those of you counting, that's a plan that had to be conceived and put in action four years in advance. Turns out greedy people aren't real good at seeing that far down the road, and now they're fucked for that.

[ProSense]

7. Boehner and Republicans

are between a rock and a hard place, and searching for the right spin.

House Won’t Roll Back Defense Cuts This Year

The House won’t be taking up changes to mandatory cuts to defense spending anytime soon despite increasing calls from GOP defense hawks and some leaders to tackle the issue this year.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) had been holding discussions with House and Senate Republicans and Democrats — including Sen. Joe Lieberman (I.-Conn.) — about attaching changes to the sequester’s defense cuts to must-pass unemployment and tax legislation this year.

The sequester is $1.2 trillion of automatic cuts to defense and domestic spending that had originally been designed to force the super committee to come to a broad deficit deal. But now that the effort has failed, the cold reality of major reductions to defense spending has spooked Republicans who are eager to roll them back.

But Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who had given his blessing to Cantor’s efforts, now appears intent on pushing the issue until sometime next year.

<...>

[tabatha]

13. Did they put themselves in this position?

Or were they maneuvered into this position. If so, HA HA HA.

[DJ13]

8. A real deal maker would suggest a trade, reduced cuts for defense

.. in exchange for rescinding the Bush tax cuts.

[Capn Sunshine]

9. why? They expire automatically in this deal

try to keep up. A real Deal Maker made this deal, and many here howled about how he "caved".

[DJ13]

14. They were to expire before as well, so end it now while they can

Never trust a conservative, thats the first thing our party needs to remember.

[Arkana]

10. Obama should just send Boehner a letter with a picture of Trollface

and the caption "Problem?"

[karynnj]

11. The Republicans required these cuts in the first place as their ransom

[Kdillard]

26. That needs to be repeated loudly and often.

[ellisonz]

12. We have them by the balls.

Don't let go Dems!

[flamingdem]

17. exactly!

for now at least they've truly done a number on themselves

[ellisonz]

22. There's going to be a lot of squirming before January 2012.

x(

[jwirr]

15. Poor baby - drowning in his crocodile tears. This is what you agreed to

now live with it.

[Kennah]

18. I can't walk past a military base without crying, mostly because they don't drink merlot.

[jpak]

27. cy baby cry

:rofl:

[yellowcanine]

28. A deal is a deal, Bonerman. Better start negotiating honestly if you don't like it.

[Safetykitten]

30. If you propose it, the cave will come.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

32. Speaker of the Soused