Sen. Elizabeth Warren: Sequestration "taking a meat ax to our budget"

[UnrepentantLiberal]

(CBS News) Faced with questions on "CBS This Morning" Thursday about a potential backup plan to get air traffic controllers back on the job amid deep FAA cuts, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said, "there is a plan." She didn't give details, but used the situation to speak of the issue of sequestration as a whole: "I have to tell you, this is about how bad sequestration is overall. This is taking a meat ax to our budget."

Warren cited cuts to the Head Start program and Meals on Wheels for seniors, adding, "The real point is sequestration is not a sensible way to deal with our financial problems. The job of Congress is to come together to find sensible spending cuts, which I think are on the table and have been offered, and to close some of the corporate loopholes so that they're paying their fair share to help fund this government."

Warren called for an end to the sequestration law. She said, "Right now there's a law in place that's the sequestration law that's about across-the-board cuts, has very little flexibility. That's what Congress adopted in order to try to avoid the fiscal cliff earlier. It just doesn't make sense. We need to get rid of it."

In addition to discussing federal cuts, Warren, of Boston, addressed how she's working to help the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing with One Fund Boston.

"People who are injured are going to have serious problems to deal with over a very long periods of time and we want to be there," she said. "We don't just want to be there today while the cameras are rolling. We want to be there next week and next month and next year.

More: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505267_162-57581335/sen-elizabeth-warren-sequestration-taking-a-meat-ax-to-our-budget/

[Plucketeer]

1. The BIGGEST "fat" eligible for trimming

is the BLOATED MILITARY budget!!!

[William deB. Mills]

2. Sequester "Empire" and "Wall St."

Rather than the sequester meat ax, we should focus on two areas for savings: the bloated military budget designed to build empire and the legal foundations of a financial system designed to tilt the table so everything slides into the laps of the 0.1%.

The Alice-in-Wonderland quality of the public policy debate in Washington is revealed by the studied misuse of English. The words do have meaning…just not their dictionary meaning. “Balanced budgets” means budgets that fund welfare for the rich and the war machine by depriving the population of social services, if not literally stealing from your bank account. “Capitalism” means welfare for the rich rather than free competition. “Crime” refers to stuff the lower classes do in the street, including demonstrating for civil liberties.

More: http://shadowedforest1000.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/the-logic-of-governance-for-the-elite/

Even better than address savings would be thinking about long-term growth (infrastructure, education, banks for building the economy rather than gambling, etc.).

[Babel_17]

3. I didn't care for some of the language in the e-mail

I recently got an e-mail from the Senator saying "Last week, Congress stepped in to restore full funding for air traffic controllers to keep out country moving."

That's too kind to Congress to the point of being laughably disingenuous.

I wrote back expressing my dissatisfaction with that language.

Hopefully the Senator's people will take note.