surprise! surprise! Lawmakers aim to stop Pentagon cuts if deficit panel fails

[spanone]

you bet your ass, it will be ALL 'entitlement's' that are cut.........

where are the lawmakers fighting for social security? medicare? medicaid????

************************

WASHINGTON — As pessimism mounted this week over the ability of a bipartisan Congressional committee to agree on a deficit-reduction plan, lawmakers began taking steps to head off the large cuts in Pentagon spending that would automatically result from the panel’s failure.

Members of both parties and both chambers said they increasingly feared that the 12-member committee would be unable to bridge deep partisan divisions and find $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction as required under the law that raised the debt ceiling and created the committee in the summer.

As talks sputtered, one panel member publicly lamented that the process was not working, and the group was chastised by a bipartisan group of budget experts at a public hearing for failing to show progress. Several members of Congress, especially Republicans on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, are readying legislation that would undo the automatic across-the-board cuts totaling nearly $500 billion for military programs, or exchange them for cuts in other areas of the federal budget.
'
Sequester will never take place'
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, has drafted a bill that would replace the military reductions that would occur under a process known in Congress as sequestration with 5 percent cuts to other, unspecified parts of the federal budget, and a 10 percent decrease in pay for members of Congress. In the House, similar measures are being assembled.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45172737/ns/politics-the_new_york_times/#.TrWVTWDtjf9

[msongs]

1. obama & dems will bend over to allow domestic cuts...again nt

[tblue]

7. Didn't we see this coming the moment the Super Committee was announced?

I could've bet good money on this one.

Randi Rhodes at the time called the Super Committer a 'brilliant move' by the Administration. I laughed. (She also called those who doubted it 'whiners.' That's when I unsubscribed to her podcasts.)

[polichick]

2. That committee is one big CON.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

5. They probably get juicy bribes from weapons manufacturers?

big bucks

[Autumn]

3. Of course. Just as a lot of people here said

that they would.

[woo me with science]

4. Did everybody wake up yet?

The theft will continue for exactly as long as we keep enabling thieves.

[TygrBright]

6. Buh-buh-but.... I thought they were all DETERMINED, HARD-CORE deficit hawks? n/t

[patrice]

8. Are we approaching a decision point re MASSIVE Occupier Civil Disobedience across the U.S.?

[Vincardog]

9. I hope so and will participate as much as I am able

[patrice]

14. This particular instance does seem a rather obvious example of what passes for

"the will of the people", under the status quo, being CLEARLY subverted by political corruption.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. Yup

[coalition_unwilling]

13. The time is approaching for a nationwide general strike. We must

first secure the active agreement of the 15% of Americans currently covered by collective bargaining agreements to violate Taft-Hartley en masse and, by so doing, nullify it entirely. We must next mobilize the masses of students and youth whose futures lie precariously in the balance. Finally, we must reach out to the enlisted ranks of the armed services and to sympathisers within the security services to break with their chains of command and support the working class. With these elements we will have the critical mass to bring the entire lumbering mass that is American post-industrial crony capitalism to a creaking halt so that the beast can be slain and a new order arise from its corpse.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. Fire, there is a fire raging'

That s gas you're bout to pour on it.

[spanone]

16. you're absolutely correct, the people have discovered the ruse

[Huey P. Long]

12. Its pretty obvious to me that things will CONTINUE to get worse, in EVERY area.

It does not matter who is 'in charge' because we all KNOW who is IN CHARGE, and it ain't us or our reps. They are useless tools of the corporate elite.
They want us all to shut up & die.

There is but one real solution, and it will come as the pain becomes unbearable.

[City Lights]

15. IMO, Lindsey should down his pen and put on an Army uniform.

If he's so pro-military, he should walk the walk. I'm sure the Generals could find something for him to do in the Middle East. And the more dangerous, the better.