Really, We Should Not Celebrate

[berni_mccoy]

While the GOP is in full swing self-destruction, and that might be one good thing out of this, a silver lining so-to-speak, it came at a terrible price.

Millions of dollars lost to small businesses who depend on tourism to the parks.
Millions lost to fishermen who can't get permits to legally fish
Income lost to temporary and part-time government workers
Damage done to farmers who needed government assistance and were unable to obtain it
Veterans who missed benefits during the shutdown
Head-start programs shutdown and both children and single moms left in the lurch
The list goes on and on...

And all the repercussions and chain reactions to the economy that result from the above.

Middle and low income families were solidly damaged by this shutdown.

And lets not forget, the confidence lost in America by the Markets and the Global Economy.

Real and significant damage was done to real working class and poor Americans. And we have a much longer road to go than re-opening the government (temporarily) at the sequestered levels and raising the debt limit (for the time being).

The Democrats in Congress need to put the full court press on and leverage the disarray of the GOP into re-establishing necessary programs that were cut by sequestration, raising taxes on the wealthy and seeing that this kind of bullshit tactics played by the Teabaggers can't happen again.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

1. Thanks for the perspective. I'm now in ashes and sack cloth

While drinking my champagne.

[RiffRandell]

6. Haha!

Yah gots to love the Debbie Downers....hell they probably are depressed Obama and the Dems didn't cave.

[HappyMe]

9. You know, more and more

I'm kind of wondering if that isn't part of this deep sorrow.

[flamingdem]

11. I'm dressed in my sack cloth and ready to parrtay!

[Pretzel_Warrior]

12. Heheheh

[Dawson Leery]

2. I agree. See this post:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3863455

[BeyondGeography]

3. O pain and woe and sorrow and misery

Life is hard, then we die. Which means you're hopeless if you don't know how to enjoy the fuck out of your little victories.

[bigtree]

7. It's hard out here for some folks

. . . even without all of the drama over rich people playing politics with our fragile and weak economy.

[BeyondGeography]

8. Correct

So on those ever-so-rare occasions when the worst people in the world obviously lose, a little happiness is allowed.

[Dawgs]

16. I feel sorry for you. Wow! n/t

[Uncle Joe]

4. Political celebration should be tempered with the very real consequences that you listed.

I would call it sober celebration and I agree the Democrats should put a full court press on, don't quit the political/policy game too early.

Thanks for the thread, berni_mccoy.

[MoonRiver]

5. I sure hope voters remember this list come November 2014. n/t

[Demit]

10. I agree with you.

Furthermore, I don't understand all the whooping it up about getting all of 3 guaranteed months of the govt being open till we have to do it all again.

[leveymg]

13. Now that the Sequestration cuts have been locked in, here's that list:

http://www.massresources.org/sequestration.html

What federal programs are affected by the sequester?

The Budget Control Act of 2011 mandates cuts in federal spending among "discretionary" and "non-exempt" mandatory programs. About half of the spending cuts each year will impact the Department of Defense (the U.S. military) and the other half will affect non-defense spending. Programs described on this web site that will receive modest cuts in funding (about 9% on average for the remainder of FY 2013) include the following:

Section 8 Rental Assistance
Public Housing
Emergency Shelter Programs
Emergency (Long-term) Unemployment Compensation
WIC (Note: Legislative changes in late March 2013 reduced the amount of cuts in this program)
Meals on Wheels
Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP)
Disaster Relief (including Hurricane Sandy Relief)
Primary and Secondary Education funded through Title 1
Head Start
Special Education Programs
Energy Efficiency Programs
Refugee Assistance
Medicare (cuts to providers of health services only and limited to no more than a 2% spending cut)

Source: OMB Report on Sequestration (Note: This is a large PDF file and a long document.)

The programs listed above are having to make budget cuts in 2013.

Many other "discretionary" federal programs are also being impacted by sequestration. They are not listed above because information about them is not included on this web site. For a more complete list of federal programs affected by sequestration see The White House Fact Sheet.

And this rundown and update on actual Sequester cuts, from the WaPo, yesterday: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/sequestration-still-matters/2013/10/14/c83c2580-3428-11e3-80c6-7e6dd8d22d8f_story.html

The 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA) emerged from the last major fiscal cliff showdown, and it cut $917 billion in spending over 10 years in return for allowing the debt limit to rise by $900 billion.

In addition, when the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction failed to agree on a debt reduction program, the BCA set spending caps that would result in an additional $1.2 trillion in cuts from projected spending levels through fiscal 2021.

To enforce the limits, sequestration required across-the-board cuts in discretionary defense and non-defense categories if Congress approved higher spending levels.

There was endless publicity of the impact of the fiscal 2013 defense sequester that cut $42.7 billion out of about $528 billion, including money from overseas operations such as Afghanistan. Training was cut, ship movements reduced, troop numbers lowered.

Less attention went to the $38.7 billion that was cut out of $489 billion in fiscal 2013’s non-defense spending. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said on the House floor Thursday that the sequester had cut 57,000 children nationwide from Head Start, a program that’s “a crucial lifeline in my district, combating poverty and making our communities safer, better places to live.”

On Friday, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) noted the irony that because of sequester cuts, National Institutes of Health funding was reduced for the research that just got Yale’s James Rothman his 2013 Nobel Prize.

For the fiscal 2014 budget, both houses of Congress took care of defense, pushing numbers far above the BCA cap.

Should sequester continue, the House’s fiscal 2014 defense figure would have to come down $47.9 billion, while the Senate’s would have to drop $54.1 billion, according to the nonprofit Bipartisan Policy Center.

Subsequently, the center says, “the impact of the defense sequester .?.?. will double in fiscal 2014 and triple in fiscal 2015 compared to fiscal 2013.”

The report found that if the defense sequester caps were not changed, between the Reagan administration defense budget and the end of the sequester in fiscal 2021, ground divisions will drop from 20 to six, Air Force fighter and attack planes will drop by 1,632 aircraft, and Navy ships will drop by 338, with the aircraft carrier force declining from 15 carriers to seven in 2021.

On the other hand, the GOP-controlled House slashed the non-defense fiscal 2013 figure below the fiscal 2014 BCA cap level while the Democratic-led Senate would have to drop its figure, $34.3 billion, for 2014 non-defense discretionary funding

On Saturday, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) discussed the impact the sequester would have this fiscal year on domestic programs, beginning with Head Start, which would cut an additonal 177,000 children.

The rest of his list was equally harsh: 1.3 million fewer students would receive Title I education assistance; 760,000 fewer households would receive less heating and cooling assistance under the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program; 9,000 fewer special education staff would be in the classroom; $291 million less for child-care subsidies for working families; $2 billion less for the National Institutes of Health, which would mean 1,300 fewer research grants.

His list goes on.

[Downtown Hound]

14. Hey, I know it's hard out there, believe me

My girlfriend had her house illegally closed upon last year by the shitfuck entity known as Wells Fargo, and I lost my house not long after. But when victories like these do happen, they're what gives meaning to the struggle and give us reason to fight on.

So fer Christ's sake, let us feel good for once!

[Dawgs]

15. Thanks. We shouldn't be giddy about what happened over the past month. n/t

[truedelphi]

17. Ya gotta wonder just how much those with the insider info made on this operation -

Stocks shorted, commodities with higher prices, so that works out well too for those in the know.

Like someone in our local letters to the editor pointed out - the signs about the parks being closed due to governmental shut down were all hanging out in their full glory the first day of the shut down. Metal signs, too.

A lot of people knew this was in the works for a long time, and no one seems too eager to have stopped it.

One Damn Big Money Party.