MORNING MESSAGE: Into The Vast Inane
OurFuture.org's Robert Borosage: "Today the 'sequester' – mindless, across the board cuts of military and domestic spending designed to be abhorrent – will go into effect. Republicans claimed a 'big victory' as House Speaker John Boehner shut down any negotiations and sent the House home. The cuts will cost jobs and add to the headwinds facing the economy. The sequester will be followed by operatic melodrama over keeping the government open after the end of March and keeping the government from defaulting on its debt beginning in the middle of May. The deficit is falling faster than any time since the demobilization after World War II, Americans are afflicted with mass unemployment and falling wages, but Washington will be traveling into the vast inane for the foreseeable future."
Repeal Sequester Movement Builds As Deadline Hits
Rep. John Conyers introduces bill to repeal sequester. HuffPost: "...Reps. Sheila Lee Jackson (D-Texas) and Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) will co-sponsor the repeal bill, and many members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus are expected to follow suit ... Conyers and his co-sponsors appear to have the same rationale for repeal that the AFL-CIO put forth: Few lawmakers seem to believe the sequester itself is prudent, so why not spike it and go back to the drawing board?"
Click here to tell representatives in Congress: Repeal the Sequester.
Federal employee furloughs imminent. W. Post: "Agencies will begin informing staff members of furloughs that could last up to 22 days through September, when the fiscal year ends ... more than a million federal employees ... will get furlough notices sometime in March, 30 days before the first furlough."
GOP Happy With Sequester
House GOP rank-and-file praise Speaker's intransigence. NYT: "Mr. Boehner, in some ways, finds himself the leader of the House Republicans with nowhere to actually lead. Among those who placed him in his post and could conceivably remove him, the test of his leadership seems to be how little action he takes."
Republicans suddenly not worried about causing economic uncertainty, argues MSNBC's Steve Benen: "...where did your concern about 'economic uncertainty' go? ... do you think a never-ending series of hostage standoffs inspire investors, reassure 'job creators,' and improve consumer confidence?"
Shutdown Deadline Next
Attention shifts to March 27 deadline to avert government shutdown. Time: "As soon as next week, House GOP appropriators will introduce a continuing resolution which would include special protections for defense programs but not raise total spending. Republicans say they are open to letting Obama devise a more surgical method of removing $85 billion from the economy over the next seven months. Democrats ... argue there is no way to slash that deep without gashing the fragile recovery ... The impending collision of these two convictions is why some Capitol Hill aides from both parties have been privately predicting a government shutdown for weeks or months."
Congress won't even listen to Ben Bernanke when he says there's no debt crisis, says NYT's Paul Krugman: "Earlier this week, Mr. Bernanke delivered testimony that should have made everyone in Washington sit up and take notice ... he pointed out that the budget picture just isn’t very scary, even over the medium run ... He then argued that given the state of the economy, we’re currently spending too little, not too much ... Finally, he suggested that austerity in a depressed economy may well be self-defeating even in purely fiscal terms ... Mr. Bernanke’s apostasy may help undermine the argument from authority — nobody who matters disagrees! — that has made the elite obsession with deficits so hard to dislodge."
Breakfast Sides
"Trio Of Democrats Introduce Legislation To Tax Financial Transactions" reports ThinkProgress: " Under the plan from Sens. Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR), financial trades would be subject to a 0.03 percent tax, which they say would raise approximately $352 billion in revenue over the next decade. Such a tax would slow down high-frequency trading that poses a threat to the health of financial markets while also incentivizing investment that drives economic growth."
Amtrak ridership up. McClatchy: "Amtrak’s ridership increased 55 percent from 1997 to 2012 ... Major cities served by state-supported passenger train corridors in California, Washington state, Missouri, Illinois, Pennsylvania and North Carolina posted large ridership gains ..."
