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Imagine a law… written with the intent of being so horrible, no sensible legislative body would be so complacent as to allow it to take effect.

So, bashing the good Congress of these great United States is nothing new, given its fourteen percent approval rating going into 2013. A couple years ago, they went and passed the Budget Control Act of 2011. This gave us the wonderful Super Committee, which was charged with fixing pretty much all of America's budget and debt problems. To motivate them to act with haste, Congress put in place a cool little thing called sequestration; $85,000,000,000 in spending cuts, half in defense and half in social programs. Cuts made intentionally terrible with the idea that the Super Committee would be willing to compromise to prevent them from happening. That's reasonable, right? The Super Committee couldn't be that partisan and incompetent, right?

Sequestration takes effect on the first of March. I listened to an interesting story on the radio the other day; two of my favorites were that, on average, patrons of American airports will have to wait an hour longer due to layoffs in security personel, and that food prices will rise because the government can no longer afford to pay enough food inspectors to be present at every processing plant at all times, forcing some of them to shut down for periods of time, losing the companies revenue.

The Department of Defense, which I'm quite fond of since it's paid for my housing and my parents' wages for the last eleven years, is going to get half a trillion dollars less between now and 2021. What does that mean? We pull out of the Middle East, spending less money on combatting foreign foes? Nope. Not at all. The spending cuts exclude "overseas contingency operations," which means all of those cuts take place at home.

Fun times to be an American. I would like to point out to foreigners that the necessary skills to become a United States Congressman are pretty much those required of mic spammers in Call of Duty: be loud and opinionated.

Please don't make this a Republican vs. Democrat debate.

The US is fucked. But that's of no concern to me! With my artificial island in the middle of the Pacific almost complete, I will happily rule over my own nation while you are all forced to suffer through this bullshit. HAAAAAhahahahahahahaha!!!

sigh

Batten down the hatches, I smell a possible uprising if this stuff keeps up. I really hope it doesn't come to that.

The US defence budget is horribly bloated and needs to be cut. But of course, since Congress is more or less owned by corporations, it'll never happen. So I'm predicting a last minute "miracle" deal that somehow shifts all the cuts to middle and lower income people.

I want to see defense contracts cut, because we buy way too much shit we don't plan to use just to line their pockets.

Other than that, I'd say it's really fucking stupid to make an automatic spending cuts bill like this. Cuts should be done with precision, carefully, making sure you actually cut what's useless and not cut what's necessary.

By the way, the reason the Super Committee was so partisan was because they had the same amount of Democrats as they did Republicans.

There's a simple solution to this. Get yourselves a third or even fourth party. Breaks the deadlock, and makes the parties have to compromise with eachother.

Unfortunately we can't do that unless we revise our voting system, or give all parties a flat advertisement budget each year.

I'm in full support of a slight tax increase that is used to fund an "election budget" which is then divided equally among all of the legitimate political parties. The parties would only be allowed to use the money from the elections budget for advertising, rallies, etc.

Takes corporate sponsorship out of the mix and gives all parties a fair shake.

Pelosi supports public finance.

You can now have slightly elevated faith in our politicians now.

I may detest congress, but I'm pleased with my senators, at least. Especially Ron Wyden.

Wyden4President.

No really.

But anyway, Oregon does have a good Senate delegation, probably the best.

I just looked her up and skimmed over some of her policies and goals, and I will probably be voting for her in whatever election she happens to be in when I turn 18, and many years after that. I love almost all of her policies, and the ones I don't I can live with.

Do you live in San Francisco?

Edit: Never mind, I got sources that suggested that it will increase government control. I am not happy that this spending cut is across the board but it is a start.

Just because they compromise doesn't mean that it's good. Good politics is about policy, not whether people agree, you can't treat politics the same way you treat social convention, and you can't treat national fiscal policy like you treat house fiscal policy.

I'd support third parties not to get them to compromise, but to get the Democrats to stop compromising. You know what happens when the Democrats compromise? This.

Reps: Slice all this spending!

Dems: No! It will hurt the workers and middle class.

Reps: Do it or else we'll let so and so crisis kill the economy.

Dems: Okeydokey.

Reps: Oh, and even though you're agreeing, you also have to agree to cause a manufactured crisis a few months from now so we can start this all over again.

Dems: Fine

Intelligent people: HEY DEMS WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T YOU MINT THE COIN/USE 14TH AMENDMENT/JUST GO OVER THE CLIFF AND FIX IT THE NEXT DAY/BOLD SOLUTION THAT THE DEMOCRATS SHOULD HAVE GONE FOR BUT DIDN'T

Sadly the Republicans will just drag everyone to the right because the Dems are spineless and nobody's making a check for the Democrats.

I don't think you know what Keynesian means, or perhaps you'd know that this is the exact opposite of Keynesian.

It's not that simple.

There has been a two party split in the US since the election of 1800, aka the First Peaceful Transfer of Power in history. The Bi-partisan system is utterly entrenched in the American consciousness; third parties have tried and failed to breach the system for the last two hundred years, and they've always been unsuccessful. It's just the way it is, and it's not going to change, unfortunately. Although, the last election saw several independent candidates win congressional seats, so there's that.

We give the parties a flat advertising budget per election in Canada. We don't pay it from taxes though. Parties still have to find donors.

EDIT: Just saying Fridge. Bi-partisanship is worse than Partisanship. If only the Bull Moose party had won…

To start, what the fuck is with this debt thing anyway? Can someone care to explain me? After all, I'm South American, my country used to ask money for the IMF, but then they got something on their knees.

Basically, our government is trying to eliminate debt by spending more money. By funneling all this money, they hope to turn out a profit from all their investments and get the United States back on track.

However, things aren't working out so well and we're neck deep in a debt of $16 trillion. I cannot see good things in the future.

The whole idea of the 3rd party is compromise.
If one party compromises with one other, they broke the deadlock. It removes the filibuster from American politics.
Right now you can't get anything to pass unless you put massive concessions to the other party in it. With 3 parties, two parties would agree on one thing, passing it without concessions.

No, they're trying to eliminate debt with all cuts and no taxes. We haven't invested this little in a damn long time.

>our government is trying to eliminate debt by spending more money

facepalm

I'm not advocating for bipartisanship or partisanship. I'm just saying that the situation here in the US isn't going to change.

The problem with our system isn't having just two parties, the problem is having two houses which in 2011 have since been split with one party controlling one house and another party controlling the other. 3rd parties actually increase deadlock, you as an Ontarian should know this most of anyone.

What's the NDP for? It's not for getting the PCs and Liberals to compromise, not by a long shot. The NDP is for people who really really hate the Liberals for not being left wing enough. The NDP is the world's most epic and aggressive opposition party, and if you remember the budget crisis from the other year (you know, the one that almost caused an early election) the NDP benefited from the impending budget deadline and made the Liberals concede a bunch of crap to the NDP or the NDP wouldn't give a single vote. Now imagine if you threw a party similar to the NDP in American politics.

You know what does facilitate efficiency and a stable government? Fewer parties and fewer houses. More parties mean hung parliaments and bigger coalitions, therefore less stable government. Throw in more houses and it makes it so so so much worse. Ever notice that the European democracies less likely to have their government collapse at a given time are the ones with one house, with fewer parties?

It's what they've been trying to do. It wasn't a grammatical error. Yeah, they may not have done it in a while, but it's left us in a pretty deep hole that'll be hard to get out of.

Lol you americans and your governments.

Considering that spending growth is the lowest it's been in…ever…
Also, there's no deficit reduction plan anywhere that has to do with raising spending.

I rate your comment "Pants on Fire"

Endgame comes today. The Senate just shut down a plan that would keep Sequestration but would give Obama more flexibility.

Rep. John Conyers just pulled out a short bill that would cancel sequestration.

And so the hellish cycle continues.

Good job, America. We're now number 1 in the world for procrastination.

It's the last day, and McConnell is filibustering everything.

Actually, it was the second bill that John Conyers co-sponsored.

I don't think you understand the correlation between austerity and recession.

I should have seen this comment earlier, but I didn't.

Where should I start? "There has been a two party split in the US since the election of 1800, aka the First Peaceful Transfer of Power in history." I rate this False. Well, the two party split started from the very beginning with the Pro-Administration and Anti-Administration parties. At the end of the First Congress there were 18 P and 8 A Senators, and 36 P and 28 A Congressmen.

"third parties have tried and failed to breach the system for the last two hundred years, and they’ve always been unsuccessful." I rate this False. The National Republican Party, Whig Party, and Republican parties all came out of nowhere in an established one party or two party system. Now, let's talk about third parties that have made good runs and stuff. The Greenback Party, Populist Party, Silver Party, and the Farmer-Labor party found particular success in congressional politics, and the Know-Nothings, Liberal Republicans, Populists, Progressives, and Reform Party managed to cut into Presdiential politics. The Lib Reps, Populists, and Progressives took second place. Reform may be in the hole now, but they did get Jesse Ventura in the Minnesota governorship not too long ago.

"Although, the last election saw several independent candidates win congressional seats, so there’s that." By several, you mean none? In the Senate however, Angus King did win a Senate seat, but he was a former governor of Maine, so that gave him an advantage. As for Berine Sanders winning re-election in Vermont, there was no Democrat in the race.