MSNBC Anchor Grills GOP Rep. On Why Congress Is Going On Recess Before Dealing With Sequester

[mucifer]

Craig Melvin does a great job! Here's the link:

[Berlum]

1. Rolls Royce !% Republicans and their dimwit Representatives go AWOL on America

As usual. Chickenhawk Republicans always go AWOL when it comes to responsibility. What squirmy weasels Republicans have become.

[zbdent]

2. Wasn't it Cantor who PUBLICLY INSISTED

"We will continue on until this is accomplished!" (not verbatim)

and then, like two days later ...

"Welp, it's not done. We're going on recess. Happy Holidays, er ..."

[mazzarro]

3. Is there no wastes in the military budget?

Why is the question about waste in the defense budget not brought up for the rethugs to answer? I hear them rant about wastes in other areas of the government and about their determination to protect military spending as if the military is devoid of wasteful spending.
I know Dems are scared shitless of being labeled 'soft on defense'; however I think it is about time that Dems follow governor Dean and state clearly that the defense budget is over bloated and as wasteful as any other that the rethugs are clamoring to cut.

[dragonlady]

4. Publicize some of the specific examples of waste

People understand examples much better than abstractions. They'll be in favor of such cuts.

[Gorp]

8. How about taking the word of the Pentagon?

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2012/08/20/congress-pushes-for-weapons-pentagon-didnt-want.html

It isn't hard to track down examples like this where the Pentagon says "no" and Congress members cave to their campaign contributors from the military industrial complex. This was the very first one I hit in my first query. It has five blatant examples where Congress is spending outrageous amounts of money on programs the military doesn't even need, or perhaps more importantly, doesn't want.

These aren't "abstractions", but rather solid examples of waste. I know everyone likes to quote the $700 toilet seats and $500 hammers, (or whatever the over-priced numbers actually are), but that's pocket change compared to the cuts the Pentagon approves of and Congress refuses to consider. We spend more on our military than the next 16 nations combined. I think we can find some ways to back that off a bit.

As for publicising it, there's more information on this kind of military waste than you could consume in ten years of reading. It isn't about publicizing it, but rather about our population being lazy farts more concerned with what some hunk or bimbo on "reality TV" is doing than what's going on in REAL life. Our society is primarily lazy, ignorant, and devoid of curiosity.

You can shout "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" as much as you want, but it won't get through even if there's a commercial on. Most people in the US don't know how to think. I'm sorry, but that's what's become of us.

Edit:
This is nothing new. The US spent millions of dollars to create a ball-point pen that could write in space during the Apollo years. The Russians used pencils. Some things never change.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

5. Sounds like they're willing to let the sequester happen

and hang it around Democrats and President Obama IMHO. We're already seeing it with their laying of the blame entirely of Jack Lew. Of course, there has been relatively little mention (if any?) about the fact that 1/2 of Congress controlled by Republicans voted for the BCA and Boehner's infamous "98%" comment once the BCA was signed. Of course, nobody has mentioned either the fact that the whole reason the BCA was proposed/passed was because the Republicans instigated the "crisis" that led to the adoption of the BCA by holding the debt ceiling hostage. That was THEIR idea, plain and simple! And none of those sequester "alternatives" put forward by the House were bipartisan efforts that could reasonably have been expected to pass the Senate and are now moot anyway. Had Romney won and the Senate was controlled by Republicans, the sequester would've been dead as a doornail by now. They seem to want the sequester to happen at this point and believe that they will win the spin/blame war. Forced to listen to Fox News for about an hour yesterday, they were in full-bore propaganda mode talking about the dire consequences for our military and their families (cue pictures of heartwarming troop homecomings that might not happen b/c of the sequester ), as well as how the sequester would injure our training and recruitment efforts and extend deployments of soldiers in Afghanistan. They also had David Frum (I believe) on later decrying that President Obama is out and about talking to citizens and trying to win public support for his policies instead of working with Congress. What I did to deserve having to be stuck waiting for my wife's oil change listening to Fox News I have no idea.

[Botany]

6. Bald faced liar: "When you listen to my constituents they say we want the cuts to happen ...

... cut the non defense discretionary spending." aka please cut my social security,
medicare, student loans, and road building.

Oh f***ing A Please! Her constituents speak like Frank Luntz talking points?

We are really fucked with right wing anti American Congresspersons who are in
gerrymandered safe districts because they really don't care about the American
people but about keeping power and protecting the rich.

[AAO]

7. There will be hell to pay for, and the (fuckheads) will take most of the blame.

The only media that will be blaming the Dems is Fucked News, and Lardass on the radio. People are ever so slowly getting the message that the (fuckheads) are lying to them (except the teabag morons who are insane.

God, I hate these people!

[stlsaxman]

9. he talked a good game but push come to shove... it was lame.

she got the last words and was long-winded enough to make her credible to the idiocracy.

she won.

[greiner3]

10. To be fair;

I'd say that more Congress Critter stuff gets done behind the scenes.

Republicans will go back to their Ivory Towers and find the mood of the country is totally against them, except for the small population that is theirs to control, and that is when they will do the blinking.

Of course there will be a halt to the Sequestration, however, it may just be another temporary one but I think President Obama will have the ability to keep the Sequestration from happening for at least until he is out of office.

Besides, and this is the biggie, all those defense cuts would go to the most heavily lobbied, at least as a group, companies in the US; GE, Goodrich, DynCorp, Navistar, Helwett-Packard, Textron, Rockwell Collins, KBR, ITT, Pratt and Whitney, Honeywell, Oshkosh (not the cute kids clothing company!), United Technology, L-3, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrup Grumann, Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

NO WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Leontius]

11. If you can't find a way to cut $200 billion out of this size budget

you don't deserve to represent the people of this country in Congress. There is no way in hell you can't cut spending without hurting people in need or the military.

[Politicalboi]

12. All I gotta say is

Thank you Harry Reid.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

13. When Republicans took the House I told everyone not to worry....

These idiots are lazy. They will spend most of the time off when they aren't passing crap that won't pass.

[SemperEadem]

14. How many people in her office will be laid off?

How many staff members in the GOP are going to be laid off? That's the example I want to see. If there are too many federal employees, then she's #1 on that list.

Her "constituents" are the mega rich money donors whose fingers are attached to the strings from which she dangles and dances. When those folks find out that their tax returns aren't going to processed, or their SS checks are going to take 6-8 weeks to arrive or their medicare is going to be impacted, we'll see just how much they want this sequestration.

[blkbear]

15. Scheduled Recess

This rep. admits near the beginning that even though congress knew that this was the month that the Sequester was due to expire since 2011, they made their schedule in 2012 to recess at this time.

Piss Poor Planing on their part does not make for good government..!