Email I received from Senator McCaskill on her discretionary spending amendment

[Sherman A1]

Dear Friend,

It's going to take full, comprehensive budget reform to break the cycle of debt and put us back on track. I am committed to making that reform a reality.

But the first piece of the puzzle is holding down government spending where we can. That's why Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) and I are offering an amendment that would cap increases in discretionary spending through 2014 and encourage the President to renew the caps when they expire.

Read about the amendment, and let me know what you think.

Discretionary spending only makes up about a third of the federal budget, so this amendment alone won’t solve our huge fiscal problems.

Much more will need to be done. I introduced legislation that would reinstitute a Pay-As-You-Go law that would force across-the-board spending cuts if Congress passed any legislation that increased spending or cut taxes without offsetting the cost. I also support efforts to create a Fiscal Task Force, which would propose legislation to close the long term budget gap and submit it to Congress for a vote.

The reason this is so important is our back is against a wall – unless the debt limit is raised our country will default on our debt, our nation’s credit will be ruined, inviting a new global economic crisis.

People who say we should let our nation default are being irresponsible, but we can’t keep kicking the can down the road – that's why I’m introducing this amendment.

Please share your thoughts here after reading about the spending caps:

http://tinyurl.com/spendingcaps

All the best,

Claire


My response to Claire was to suggest a 50% cut in defense spending utilizing the proceeds to cut the deficit and provide medicare for all.

[JDPriestly]

1. The problem is that the same people always take the brunt of the cuts:

those of us in the poor and lower middle classes.

If cuts are necessary, they should be done so that everyone from the richest to the poorest American, from the most powerful to the weakest, get hurt so that they feel the same pain.

When the financial and subprime lending crisis was first announced, the government rushed to save the banks. Defaulting homeowners, many of whom were the victims of fraud, unscrupulous lenders and the lies of members of the government who encouraged the excessive borrowing, were abandoned to their own inadequate devices.

People losing their jobs were thrown the bone of unemployment benefits and help with paying for health care. Meanwhile, the people on Wall Street, who more than anyone were responsible for the crises and more than anyone had the expertise to avoid or avert it, were awarded their bonuses. They will, again this year, receive huge bonuses.

May I suggest that, if cuts are to be made, Congress start with its own salaries and perks. Of course, cutting its own salaries and perks will not make much of a dent in the federal budget, but it will signal to the American people that our government is not asking ordinary Americans to make all the sacrifices.

I say this after spending a lot of time in recent weeks talking to dear friends some of who are unemployed, others of whom are losing their homes and still others who cannot sell homes that they need to sell. These people are suffering. Most of them are in the numbly sad phase of their grief and are trying to endure patiently.

But, as we are seeing now in Haiti, people can only take so much difficulty without panicking, without becoming angry.

There are, for example, a number of millionaire senators and representatives in Congress. They should refuse to take their salaries and pay for their own health care, transportation, etc. until the cuts are no longer necessary.

This gesture would be a symbolic way to convey the message that the cuts have to be made so as to cause as little pain as possible to the poorest and the lower middle class -- so that there is a feeling of fairness and trust about the cuts.