Americans are being lied to about the deficit

[phantom power]

So we reach the end of yet another lengthy deficit reduction negotiation, and all signs at this writing point to failure.

This is actually very good news, although to hear the pundits tell it, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will be trampling down the doors of the New York Stock Exchange and everyone in the US will soon be force-fed poisoned baklava at gunpoint. Indeed, if you followed the financial and political press over the past couple of weeks, you would have thought the world would literally come to an end if this arbitrary deadline to cut an arbitrary percentage of the deficit isn't met.

And yet, no deal means "sequestration" (also known as "the triggers") will kick in, which will mean brutal cuts to discretionary spending and defence starting in 2013. If the goal is to cut $1.2tn in order to set the country's fiscal house in order, why should all these deficit hawks care how the government gets there? Well, it turns out that this isn't really about deficit reduction at all. The entire exercise is about gutting the social safety net, thus giving the markets "confidence" in the United States' ability to govern itself.

...

The polls have been clear and solid over time: The public cares far more about jobs than deficits and a majority of Americans are opposed to cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Even a majority of Republicans believe that the wealthy should pay more and that the "entitlements" should be left alone. Considering that the world is in the midst of an epic economic slowdown, this should not be surprising. At a time when average working families are feeling intensely vulnerable, the last thing they want is for the government to kick out another leg of the wobbly stool of their financial security. One can only wonder what would happen if the powers that be cared as much about the confidence of the citizen consumers as they do about the confidence of the markets.

But what about those triggers? Well, because they require large cuts in defence, which everyone knows the Republicans will never actually sign off on, it's highly likely that congress will find a way to scrap them too. After all, any agreement congress makes, it can also break. And it certainly appears that the Republicans have no intention of following through.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011112271316280749.html

[Vincardog]

1. The Republicans never had any intention of following through on anything except gutting SSI and

killing every social spending program that does not directly put $$$$ in the pocket of the .01%
They are FASCIST scum and so are their ConservaDEM enablers

[MH1]

2. Republicans don't HAVE to sign off on the auto defense cuts

They will happen UNLESS Congress (republicans and democrats) can get something to Obama's desk that he'll sign OR come up with something that will get a 2/3 majority to override Obama's veto.

[patrice]

3. The jobs-for-tax-cuts are SUPPOSED to be PRIVATIZED GOVERNMENT services. Guaranteed 6-figure incomes

on the backs of the poor, elderly, sick, and imprisoned.

[dtexdem]

4. But not effectively.

Although the lies and their ineffectiveness don't matter, because Congress still does the bidding of those who bribe it.