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27% -Gutting Programs in the US Gov
Why can't we get a balance between cuts and taxes?
My advice to you is save whatever money you were going to scrape off the bottom of your change bucket to donate to your favorite candidate because YOU are going to need it.
Budget proposals can't get any conscensus, and we are going to be facing a strange moment of cliff hanging in 2013. Who wants to pick which leader for managing the process...
Subtopic - Healthcare?
Our Best Physician societies are becoming rattled now - and here's why.....
http://www.hematology.org/News/2011/7258.aspx
Super Committee Failure Leaves 27 Percent Medicare Payment Cut in Place; Automatic Cuts For Most Federal Programs To Begin in 2013
Dateline: November 22, 2011
Hours before its statutory deadline, the joint congressional committee assigned to recommend $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction announced Monday that a bipartisan agreement was beyond its reach.
Deep partisan division over the mix of entitlement cuts and tax hikes prevented the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (commonly referred to as the "Super Committee") from reaching any agreement on a deficit-reduction package. ...
With the Super Committee failing to reach agreement on a deficit-reduction proposal, Congress missed an opportunity to permanently repeal the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula. As a result, physicians still face a 27 percent cut in Medicare physician payments scheduled to take effect January 1, 2012.
Here's what the Medical Organization says Lately, now that 9 months more have gone by without any action:
Funding for NIH in Jeopardy; Congress Plans Six Month Continuing Resolution
August 16, 2012
FY 2013 funding for the NIH is still very much in jeopardy. While the Senate Appropriations Committee passed its version of a FY 2013 L-HHS bill in June, which included $100 million more for the NIH, that is clearly unobtainable. The House L-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee passed its version of the bill in July flat-lining NIH funding and cutting several other Obama Administration priorities. The House Appropriations Committee indefinitely postponed consideration of the L-HHS bill making it clear that we would not see completion of the appropriations process by the start of the new fiscal year (October 1) and that a Continuing Resolution (CR) would be needed to keep the government operating. Just prior to leaving Washington for the August recess, congressional leaders announced they had reached agreement on a six month CR that would keep the government funded through March 2013. The CR would flat-line the NIH budget. The Congress is expected to vote on and pass the CR when it returns to Washington in September. Fiscal conservatives agreed to the CR because they believe they will have a majority in both the House and Senate in March and can at that time extract significant cuts.
About how our politicians fail to decide - the process of stalling gets described by Bob Woodward in a new book.
CNN BLOGGER QUOTE FOLLOWS:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/09/new-woodward-book-goes-in-depth-on-debt-battle/
About material excerpted from "The Price of Politics" by Bob Woodward
Think your credit card battle is a problem, how about unlimited debt until the banks won't loan to your sovereign government that's running on empty.....
CNN Blogger notes that Woodward's new book describes the Senate supercommittee 2011 National Budget meetings with the President and the White House Staff like this:
Why can't we get a balance between cuts and taxes?
My advice to you is save whatever money you were going to scrape off the bottom of your change bucket to donate to your favorite candidate because YOU are going to need it.
Budget proposals can't get any conscensus, and we are going to be facing a strange moment of cliff hanging in 2013. Who wants to pick which leader for managing the process...
Subtopic - Healthcare?
Our Best Physician societies are becoming rattled now - and here's why.....
http://www.hematology.org/News/2011/7258.aspx
Super Committee Failure Leaves 27 Percent Medicare Payment Cut in Place; Automatic Cuts For Most Federal Programs To Begin in 2013
Dateline: November 22, 2011
Hours before its statutory deadline, the joint congressional committee assigned to recommend $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction announced Monday that a bipartisan agreement was beyond its reach.
Deep partisan division over the mix of entitlement cuts and tax hikes prevented the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (commonly referred to as the "Super Committee") from reaching any agreement on a deficit-reduction package. ...
With the Super Committee failing to reach agreement on a deficit-reduction proposal, Congress missed an opportunity to permanently repeal the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula. As a result, physicians still face a 27 percent cut in Medicare physician payments scheduled to take effect January 1, 2012.
Here's what the Medical Organization says Lately, now that 9 months more have gone by without any action:
Funding for NIH in Jeopardy; Congress Plans Six Month Continuing Resolution
August 16, 2012
FY 2013 funding for the NIH is still very much in jeopardy. While the Senate Appropriations Committee passed its version of a FY 2013 L-HHS bill in June, which included $100 million more for the NIH, that is clearly unobtainable. The House L-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee passed its version of the bill in July flat-lining NIH funding and cutting several other Obama Administration priorities. The House Appropriations Committee indefinitely postponed consideration of the L-HHS bill making it clear that we would not see completion of the appropriations process by the start of the new fiscal year (October 1) and that a Continuing Resolution (CR) would be needed to keep the government operating. Just prior to leaving Washington for the August recess, congressional leaders announced they had reached agreement on a six month CR that would keep the government funded through March 2013. The CR would flat-line the NIH budget. The Congress is expected to vote on and pass the CR when it returns to Washington in September. Fiscal conservatives agreed to the CR because they believe they will have a majority in both the House and Senate in March and can at that time extract significant cuts.
About how our politicians fail to decide - the process of stalling gets described by Bob Woodward in a new book.
CNN BLOGGER QUOTE FOLLOWS:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/09/new-woodward-book-goes-in-depth-on-debt-battle/
About material excerpted from "The Price of Politics" by Bob Woodward
Think your credit card battle is a problem, how about unlimited debt until the banks won't loan to your sovereign government that's running on empty.....
CNN Blogger notes that Woodward's new book describes the Senate supercommittee 2011 National Budget meetings with the President and the White House Staff like this:
"On the one hand, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner warned of an economic disaster.
“'You can’t veto,' Geithner told the president, according to the book. 'You cannot be responsible for default.'
"Then, Woodward writes, 'Anything had to be done to prevent it. Anything to preserve the global economy.'
On the other hand, Obama was faced with appearing politically weak and bowing down to Republican demands in one of Washington's most high-profile stalemates.
According to the book, David Plouffe, Obama’s senior political adviser, said, “If he caves, it will have long-lasting political repercussions that we may never get out of. If we draw a line in the sand on something this important and cross it, we may never be able to come back.”
................................
Woodward writes that Obama was “furious” and told Boehner he was not going to sign a bill that required him to deal with the debt ceiling a second time before the election.
Boehner described to Woodward that Obama was "moaning and groaning and whining and demanding" during the call, an account Obama disagreed with in his own interview with Woodward.
“Listen, anybody who knows me knows I don’t moan, I don’t groan, I don’t whine.” Obama told Woodward. “I’m not desperate. I was very angry about how he had behaved." Ultimately, the president did not have to make a decision on whether to veto that version of the bill. Republicans dropped the two-vote measure as part of the deal that Congress reached on July 31, two days before default deadline.
For the book, Woodward said he talked to more than 100 people in hundreds of hours of recorded interviews. He also compiled thousands of pages of transcripts from the meetings for his research.
In his conclusion, Woodward gives both Boehner and Obama tough marks over how they handled the situation, essentially kicking the can down the road "
