Nutter's Washington

Obama on Warpath: For the sequester before against it.

The spending reductions under the baseline in the budget sequester are days away from taking effect. Unless there is a dramatic change in the political situation, there will be a reduction of about $85 billion in budget authorization spread out over some domestic programs and a healthy whack out of national defense. This translates into about five percent of the affected programs on a fiscal year basis.

Note, that a few items before we go on. The federal deficit will be nearly a trillion dollars this year again. The government borrows more than $3 billion a day to fund its operations; the national debt has increases nearly 6 billion since January 2009.

President Obama has hit the campaign trail again to rally against his own makings, really the warpath to denounce the sequester. Denounce an idea which originated in the White House in the summer of 2011 and which he signed into law.

State of the Dis-Union: Nothing New from SOTU

State of the Union  was described to me by a very liberal friend  as an awful speech. I have nothing new to add to that comment except wrong on substance, wrong on tone and wrong on direction. 

Looks like the campaign continues. Leadership, pragmatism, reality unseen. 

The message as it always has been is more of the same only much more. More spending, more regulation, more government, more blame game. 

Sequester looming, no budget submitted, no plan other than that which I have mentioned before-guns, climate and illegal immigrants. 

 How are you feeling this morning America's former great middle class? I suspect that if this continues the country will just tune the President out. 

Let the sequester begin: About time to get serious about something

It appears likely the budget sequester will go into effect on March 1st. A symbol of the failure of past and current policies and leadership. The President wants to delay it so something can be worked out. His idea is to add more taxes, no suggestions to cut spending. His idea of delay makes sense in the abstract, to implement considered judgement rather than a meat axe approach, but he has not credibility. Mr. Obama has failed to make any attempt other than empty rethoric to address the deficit, bloated government and a dismal unsustainable fiscal outlook.

So, as I said many months ago, let the sequester happen. Right now it is the only thing that may jolt the system. 

Here is a past piece in part I wrote on the subject in July:

Battle Brewing over LNG in Washington

There is a new battle about to happen in Washington that will pit some of the biggest names in Washington politics, including some of the giants of American industry, against each other.

 

It's not about taxes or the debt ceiling, or immigration or gun control; it involves natural gas, the now carbon-based fuel of choice. Strangely, it does not involve what we think of natural gas that powers heaters, stoves, mammoth generators and factories. It is the kind of gas that is liquid or LNG and there are big players in Washington and in Corporate American who think it is worth arguing about

Expanded production of LNG could have adverse effects on many industrial and manufacturing companies that directly and indirectly use enormous amount natural gas in their business. This means production of steel, fertilizer, chemicals, cement, aluminum, metal smelting, glass and paper, for example. If over the next few years, enough gas is liquefied for export, gas prices could rise, erasing the benefits of current low prices.