Associated Press
John McCain and Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire yesterday.
Republicans Sens. John McCain, Kelly Ayotte, and Lindsey Graham kicked off the first in a series of public events yesterday, intended to highlight the apparent dangers of deep, automatic defense cuts due at the end of the year. The first event was in Ayotte's home state of New Hampshire, where the lawmakers spoke at BAE Systems, which stands to lose thousands of jobs from reduced government spending.
At the event, McCain said:
"This was generated by Congress, and the president has a legitimate point when he says, 'Well, Congress is the one that came up with this cockamamie idea, and so,' as he said the other day, 'let them wiggle out of it.' Well, I understand that logic and there's something to it."
Yes, actually, there is. In fact, Graham told reporters yesterday, "What was our Republican leadership thinking when they agreed to the concept of sequestration?"
I've been wondering the same thing. McCain, Ayotte, and Graham are traveling from swing state to swing state, railing against the proposed defense cuts, which many Republicans blame on President Obama. But as the tour continues, is it too much to ask that the political world remember that these cuts were the GOP's idea?
As we've discussed, as part of last year's debt-ceiling deal, policymakers accepted over $1 trillion in cuts that would be implemented if the so-called supercommittee failed. Democrats weren't completely willing to roll over -- they wanted to create an incentive for Republicans to work in good faith.
Republicans agreed: if the committee failed, the GOP would accept defense cuts and Dems would accept non-defense domestic cuts. The committee, of course, flopped when GOP members refused to compromise, which put us on the clock for the automatic reductions that Republicans contributed to the very process they insisted upon.
So why blame Obama? He's not the one who came up with the debt-ceiling crisis; he's not the one who recommended the defense cuts; and he's not the one who refused to compromise during the supercommittee talks.
Indeed, the larger question now is what Republicans prioritize more: defense spending or tax breaks.
Greg Sargent had a good item on this yesterday.
Republicans such as John McCain and Lindsey Graham have been touring swing states to highlight the looming sequester cuts to defense spending that are set to be triggered by the deficit supercommittee's failure. They have said such cuts will be devastating to our national security, and have blamed Obama and Dems for the imminent threat.
At the same time, House Republicans will vote this week against the Democratic plan to extend tax cuts on all income over $250,000, because it doesn't extend the cuts on all levels, including income higher than that.
So here's the question: If the looming sequester cuts are such a threat to national security, why doesn't that undermine Republican leverage in the discussions over what to do about the tax cuts?
Right. The looming, automatic cuts are inching closer to reality because Republicans refuse to consider some tax increases as a solution to the debt problem they sometimes pretend to care about. If GOP officials accepted new tax revenue, a deal could come together and these large defense cuts would simply be taken off the table.
But Republicans, at least for now, won't budge -- they want a larger agreement that would eliminate the need for deep Pentagon cuts and they want a deal that doesn't require any increases on any one at any time.
McCain, among others, pushed the argument yesterday that it's up to Obama to "lead" by bringing policymakers together and working out a solution. That sounds nice, but it's foolish -- the president has tried this repeatedly, but Republicans won't compromise. Indeed, even now, McCain is urging Obama to work towards a compromise while McCain's party simultaneously says it won't compromise.
And so it's the GOP that has a decision to make. While they decide, if they could stop blaming the White House for the Republicans' own idea, it'd make the conversation a lot less ridiculous.
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Projection. Do as I say, not as I do.
That has to be covered in there somewhere.
Republicans blame Obama because the press will let them. In fact, most of the press will happily exhonerate Republicans for sequestration and place total responsiblity on Obama's shoulders.
Next question.
It depends....who will spend more money to buy Congress? Halliburton or the Tea Party?
There you go living in the past again! Why must you continue to try and remind people of such things? LIBERALS! They want to keep dragging us through reality when it is our right to live in a delusion!
Look here now, you are besmirching the party that hears god! (well voices in their heads anyway)
It could pose a good subject for debate---Does scheming and conniving truly require thinking? Does lock step conformity in any way promote reasoning?
Yes, ridiculous is is the proper descriptor of the modern Republican brand!
Reaganomics has tainted the Republican intellect, with its cockamamie elixir of increased defense spending, lower-taxes, and supply-side economic nonsense producing, presto, a balanced economy for generations to come! What rot!
Well, here we go again! The Republican brand is relentlessly pushing ridiculousness upon our eyes and ears, while forcing us to touch and taste economic ruin with their stinky resistance to common sense public policy!
Punish the Republicans at the Polls in Nov. 2012! -Kevo
Didn't Ronnie Ray-Gun prove that deficits don't matter? And in the alternate universe of RepublicanWorld 2+2 always equals 22.
Steve Benen asks, "is it too much to ask that the political world remember that these cuts were the GOP's idea?"
And, Gore Vidal answered,- back in 2004: “We are the United States of Amnesia. We learn nothing because we remember nothing."
Which at least puts us ahead of Louis XVIII.
What's fascinating to me is that the sequester bill specified massive cuts to both defense and to non-defense discretionary spending. The latter will be even worse for the economy. And yet no one in the MSM seems to care or even mention those cuts, even while they breathlessly cover the Crazyhawk Panic Tour.
Did I read right?
The article above this one is about Republican Secure America Now ads against Obama, and this article is about Congress wanting defense budget cuts, and blaming defense budget cuts on Obama?
Because they include welfare/medicaid/Social Security?(I think) and they want to cut those anyway...........plus - they don't USE those programs which makes them less than nothing in the eyes of Congress.
Very humorous. All three of these jokers - McCain, Graham, and Ayotte - voted to approve the sequestration bill.
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=112&session=1&vote=00123
Correction...only McCain voted in favor.
Thanks, Sue. I guess we need to follow the reporters around and shout out our own questions if they won't... "Why did you vote for that, Senator?" " Why did you vote for sequestration?" Get the cameras rolling...
McCain you are part of the Republican leadership! So what you need to do is look in a mirror and ask yourself "WTF was I thinking!"
In keeping with "Keep the government's hands off Medicare", we now have "government spending doesn't create jobs,,, defense spending does...". Lawrence O'Donnell pointed out this is about the only way to get defense spending cuts..
I think it's inevitable, probably due some kind of emergency, that governments (European sooner) will realize they can create value without borrowing (print money) and yeah,, they will have to control speculation/monopolize some resources/energy.. No more taxes, the rich can spend all the money they want on themselves (not speculations) and fill their basements with the extra monies.
This sentence is impossible: "What was our Republican leadership thinking?"
You have to have the one thing a Republican cannot have and still be a Republican, in order to think.
Where's Shooter (change the first "o" to an "i" and the second "o" to a "t") to defend these wonderful patriots.
Lets see if I understand this correctly.
The GOP argument is, "We agreed to a poison pill in the debt ceiling negotiations that would insure that we would negotiate in good faith and now that we have failed to negotiate in good faith and it is time to swallow the poison pill, it is all Obama's fault."
Is that about it? Or am I missing something here?
Isn't that what got us here in the first place? The committee of 12 who had -what- six months to get together and work out a solution to the problem, KNOWING that if they didn't sequestration would happen? And at the end, they just walked out and waggled their crooked tails and looked up at the ceiling.
Obama can't win for losing - the lies are getting to me. Nobody makes a big enough deal about his Jobs Bill languishing in Congress - and now they're getting ready to take a break - because they're so worn out from naming post offices - and of course even if they weren't, the Jobs Bill couldn't get through anyway. It's enough to make you wish a bridge that NOBODY ever crosses would collapse while they're gone.
Don't be silly. It was all the committee work and negotiations on the 30-plus bills revoking Obamacare that exhausted them.