No, it's the latest fabricated, fake financial crisis to hit Washington D.C. It's a group of mandated cuts to federal defense and domestic spending set to begin March 1st. Many people believe the combined impacts will be drastic, leading to job losses, economic slow down, and another recession.
Where did this sequester (lousy name) idea come from? It dates to the summer of 2011and our first-ever "debt ceiling" impasse. Remember? Periodically, the Congress votes to increase the federal debt limit, which simply allows the government to pay bills already owed. It's totally routine, and has happened scores of times in every administration. Raising the debt ceiling does not increase the national debt or budget deficit. That water is already over the dam. It just permits the government to make its payments. If we can't pay, then the government is technically in default, and that's not good.
In July of 2011, the torch-and-pitchfork faction of the GOP decided they could put the screws to Obama and his reelection chances by flatly refusing to approve an increase to the debt ceiling. They demanded spending cuts first (which had nothing to do with the issue), and would not budge. "Default? Whatever, dude. Don't really care."
At the last minute, Obama and Congress agreed to some short-term spending cuts with no new revenue in exchange for no more of these phony crises until after the election. Default was averted, but Standard & Poor's nevertheless downgraded the U.S. government's credit rating for the first time in history.
At that time (see posts of 8/2/11 and 8/7/11), Buster bemoaned the Republicans "suicide-bomber mentality" and declared the entire episode to be "total horseshit! Please remember who brought you these road apples."
The sequester cuts were part of that last-minute 2011 agreement and were intended to produce a deficit reduction deal: Unless deficit reductions of $1.5 trillion were passed by December 2012, the supposedly unthinkable, draconian sequester cuts would kick in on January 1st. The recent tax deal pushed the sequester cuts to March 1st.
Obviously, no deficit deal happened and here we are. And Republicans are now saying it's all Obama's fault and the sequester was his idea in the first place, so blame him if bad things happen.
That's a rather creative revision of recent history, and it insults our intelligence. The simple fact is, if Tea-Bag Republicans had not turned into hijacking, hostage-taking assholes in 2011, we wouldn't be having this frickin' conversation!
We know where to place the blame.
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