The Impossible Budget

The problem is the sequester, particularly the Defense cuts (because as we’ve seen with SNAP, too many DC legislators are quite content to literaly take food out of the mouths of starving children).

Shutdown crisis rooted in GOP’s budget

By DAVID ROGERS, Politico

9/28/13 4:40 PM EDT

It promised to protect defense spending while living with the post-sequestration caps of $967 billion set in the Budget Control Act. But to deliver on this pledge, it required such large cuts from domestic spending bills that the whole appropriations process collapsed by mid-summer.

A popular $44.1 billion transportation and housing bill had to be pulled from the House floor in late July. Of the eight, annual appropriations bills which are most truly non-defense spending, none made it through the House this year.

…

(I)f the CR really strictly matched the post-sequester allocation of funds under the BCA for 2014, the Pentagon would have to cut roughly $44 billion from the $512.5 billion level approved by the House in late July.

That’s an immense drop which many Republicans would find hard to accept even on a two to three month basis.

…

“Some will complain that the bill breaks the cap placed on defense spending under the sequester level for fiscal 2014 put into place by the Budget Control Act,” (House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal) Rogers said. “To this I say of course it does.”

“If nothing is done to cancel the next round of sequestration cuts that are scheduled to take effect when this Congress adjourns, this bill would be cut to a total of $468 billion.”

And while the primary impetus is arguably Republican, the fact is that many, many Democrats think Austerity in times of Depression is a good idea and are willing to sell out their constituents to their campaign donors.