The question over the next seven weeks is whether Obama and Congress can agree, now or later on, on how to slash $1.2 trillion from the deficit, raise revenues with possible changes in the tax code, and address the entitlement programs of Social Security and Medicare. And they also have to figure out how to stop across-the-board cuts to defense and domestic programs totaling $110 billion next year.

Obama will meet with congressional leaders at the White House on Friday....

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 Here is $68 billion found for cutting:

"Report says $67.9 billion in defense budget is idled away" by Bryan Bender  |  Globe Staff, November 15, 2012

WASHINGTON — They called it the Red Balloon Challenge. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, responsible for investing in next-generation technologies, recently paid researchers at MIT $40,000 to coordinate a social-media treasure hunt for 10 red balloons placed at various locations across the country. They succeeded, in eight hours, 52 minutes, and 41 seconds.

At Brown University, researchers received nearly $300,000 from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to determine the color of the wings of the Archaeopteryx, a bird that lived 150 million years ago. They concluded “black, with 95 percent probability.”

Then there is the beef jerky rollup being cooked up for the troops by the Army’s Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center, where “a variety of flavors are being developed, including salami, chipotle, turkey, pork, and smoked ham.” They are also working with a food processing company on a fish-flavored one, but as one of the developers put it, “the recipe needs to be tweaked to make it less fishy.”

Fishy is right, according to “Department of Everything,” a wry but scathing new report commissioned by Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma that identified $67.9 billion in the defense budget during the next decade designated for projects that have little to do with defending the nation. That waste includes conducting nonmilitary research, running schools, grocery stores, and microbreweries, and maintaining unnecessary overhead and supplies.

Several of the cited projects were funded in New England. Efforts to reach the MIT researchers and the Natick center were unsuccessful.

“I prepared this report because the American people expect the Pentagon’s $600 billion annual budget to go toward our nation’s defense,” said Coburn, the ranking Republican of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and a noted budget hawk. “That isn’t happening. Billions of defense dollars are being spent on programs and missions that have little or nothing to do with national security, or are already being performed by other government agencies.”

He added: “Spending more on grocery stores than guns doesn’t make any sense. And using defense dollars to run microbreweries, study Twitter slang, create beef jerky, or examine ‘Star Trek’ does nothing to defend our nation.”

His report says, the same agency that paid MIT to find balloons paid some $100,000 for a workshop that included “an interesting discussion involving the Klingons, a fictional alien species who were villains and then later allies of humanity in the ‘Star Trek’ series.”

 They have so much money sloshing around they don't know what to do with it. 

One of the sessions, titled “Did Jesus die for Klingons, too?,” featured a philosophy professor “who pondered the theological conflict to Christianity if intelligent life was found on other planets.”

The 73-page scrub of Pentagon spending is a remarkably savory read for a government report. Yet as Congress debates ways to rein in federal spending, Coburn insisted it is no laughing matter and expressed hope it will be taken seriously.

 Do you see me laughing here? 

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 Must be the anger that is fooling you. 

"Leaders hopeful fiscal cliff can be averted" by Matt Viser and Christopher Rowland  |  Globe Staff, November 16, 2012

WASHINGTON — Top congressional leaders emerged from a meeting with President Obama at the White House on Friday trying to project bipartisan confidence that they would break through gridlock to avert a potential economic catastrophe triggered by budget cuts and increased taxes.

 I smell an agenda being pushed. 

Following an hourlong meeting at the White House, the four top congressional leaders stood by one another outside the West Wing, taking turns calling the meeting “very constructive.” Stocks on Wall Street briefly surged, with renewed optimism that a chief economic roadblock would be removed....

 The only ones who matter. 

Both sides seem to be looking at the same roadmap — Republicans now concede that they will agree to increase tax revenues, and Democrats say they will agree to more spending cuts....

Economists contend such a one-two combination would send the soft economy reeling, leading to job losses and drops in consumer and business spending. The effect would be felt throughout the nation.

Massachusetts officials estimate that state tax collections alone could decline by $300 million in the first six months of 2013 and another $1 billion in the fiscal year beginning July 2013. Spending cuts would strip away millions of dollars in grant funding for local communities — in the middle of their current fiscal years — with no way to make it up.

Those initial grant cuts for Massachusetts communities include $18.2 million for schools, $21.2 million for special education, $7.3 million for community development block grants, and $11.2 million for LIHEAP, the federal heating fuel assistance program for low- and middle-income families.

The state’s private-sector economy also would suffer from a reduction of about $1.5 billion in defense and health spending, according to state estimates.

Lieutenant Governor Timothy Murray met with city and town officials this week and discussed the potential consequences.

“It would have a pretty devastating impact, really across the board,’’ Murray said Friday in a phone interview.

In the aftermath of the election, both sides have been posturing and outlining their own prebargaining positions.The negotiations could set the tenor for the start of Obama’s second term. They could signal months of acrimony or set the stage for a series of bipartisan agreements.

Republicans lost seats in the House and Senate and were unable to win the White House. But they still control the House and have the numbers needed to stop legislation in the Senate.

Obama has been more assertive than he was in past negotiations, pledging that he would not agree to any deal that allows tax rates for the wealthy to stay as they are. He is also preparing to take his campaign outside Washington in the coming weeks, trying to use his election win as a rallying cry.

 I read above he was willing to compromise, etc. WTF?

“That’s an agenda that Democrats and Republicans and independents, people all across the country share,” Obama said at the beginning of the Friday meeting. “So our challenge is to make sure that we are able to cooperate together, work together, find some common ground, make some tough compromises, build some consensus, and to do the people’s business.”

Just as the meeting began, when reporters were ushered in for photos, Obama remarked playfully that Boehner’s birthday is Saturday.

“We didn’t make him a cake because we didn’t know how many candles we’d need,” Obama said.

As they laughed and shook hands, Boehner, who is turning 63, said, “Yeah, right.”

Obama later gave Boehner a bottle of Tuscan red wine. The bottle of 1997 Poggio Antico Brunello di Montalcino Altero retails for about $125.

 Are you tired of the shit political fooleys on your dime, 'murkns? 

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"Phase in deficit cuts, economists say" by Megan Woolhouse  |  Globe Staff, November 19, 2012

No one disputes the federal deficit has to be cut. The argument is when. And most economists say not now.

Raising taxes, cutting spending, or both would threaten an already anemic recovery, pushing unemployment higher, or worse, economists said. The debate underway in Washington on how to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff echoes arguments made throughout the presidential campaign over what to do about the mounting deficit as the nation emerges from the worst recession since the Great Depression.

 As if we have emerged from the Grand Recession.

And now President Obama and Congress will try once again to negotiate a plan that will moderate spending cuts and extend some or all of the Bush-era tax cuts expiring at the end of the year.

 Obama said he's holding firm on an increase on the wealthy!

What is best, many economists say, is that Washington accept higher deficits in the near term — no matter how unpopular — to support the nation’s economic recovery and lower unemployment while adopting a long-term plan to lower deficits after the economy has strengthened.

 And ONCE AGAIN the BANKERS and the BONDHOLDERS will BENEFIT!

“The key here is to put in place a long-term deficit­-reduction plan that’s phased in,” said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight, a forecasting firm in Lexington. “And they will need to do it in such a way that it doesn’t hurt people immediately.”

So how long should Washington hold off on dealing with a $16 trillion — and growing — national debt? A recent report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recommends a deficit-reduction plan that would require taxes to rise and government spending to slow in the next three to seven years.

In the meantime, the group said, short-term measures that would increase the deficit, such as extending unemployment insurance benefits, increasing aid to state and local governments, and delaying the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts, would help accelerate US economic growth.

Such an approach “might raise doubts about whether longer-term deficit reduction would actually take place,” the report said. “Households, businesses, state and local governments, and participants in the financial markets would be more likely to believe that the future deficit reduction would truly take effect if the future policy changes were specific and widely supported.”

Many of the costs driving the deficit upward are due to demographic surges created as the baby-boom generation ages, causing Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid costs to balloon. Unless the federal government demonstrates it can get control of such programs, analysts said, it risks losing the confidence of financial markets and sliding into the kind of debt crisis that has plunged Europe back into recession. 

 I'm SO SICK of the MONIED MEDIA and ITS EXCUSES when we SEE WHO are the IMPORTANT ONES, 'eh?

Yet the economics of the budget have proved easier than the politics, which requires compromise from Democrats advocating for tax increases and Republicans jockeying for spending cuts. Unless they do, Bush-era tax cuts will expire and automatic, across-the-board spending cuts, adopted to spur Congress to tackle long-term deficits, will take effect.

This combination, known as the fiscal cliff, would suck hundreds of billions of dollars out of the economy and probably push it back into recession.

 But not all at once like a cliff. Is it just me, or are you tired of the constant distortions 

One path toward agreement, said Sung Won Sohn, a professor of economics at California State University, could be reducing or eliminating tax loopholes, particularly if they benefit those with the highest incomes. That could finesse one of the most contentious issues holding up a compromise: increasing taxes on the wealthy.

However, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said Sunday that she is looking for more than that. She said she is hopeful that lawmakers can avoid a fiscal cliff, but any agreement has to include tax-rate increases for the wealthy.

On ABC’s ‘‘This Week,’’ she said she cannot accept a deal that does not alter tax rates for the wealthy. Pelosi said ‘‘just to close loopholes is far too little money,’’ and other ideas have to be considered. Republicans have suggested they are open to finding more revenues, the ­Associated Press reported.

Christian E. Weller, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, said he expects Congress to delay most of the scheduled tax increases and spending cuts and complete a major deficit-reduction deal next fall.

And then the cliff disappeared.

He forecasts “reasonable growth” in the economy in 2013, with an acceleration in the second half of the year.

 We have been hearing that same bullshit from you guys for five f***ing years now. 

“Dealing with the fiscal cliff is now a matter of tax and spending choices,” he said. “It is possible to take back some tax cuts, extend some spending, and still come out ahead.”

Philip Swagel, an economist at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy and a Treasury official in President George W. Bush’s administration, envisions a political compromise that extends the payroll tax cut in early 2013. The payroll tax cut, which saves the average worker about $1,000 annually, was enacted two years ago as a stimulus measure. It expires at the end of the year.

He said he also supports extending the Bush-era tax cuts, which primarily benefit the wealthy, at least temporarily. To increase revenues in the short term, he said, Congress and the president should instead close tax loopholes....

Behravesh, the chief economist at IHS, said his firm’s preliminary forecast for 2013 is for slow and steady growth if policy makers postpone tax increases and budget cuts and negotiate a credible deficit-reduction plan. Behravesh said he thinks Congress will phase out a host of Bush-era tax cuts and phase in big spending cuts in 2014.

 I doubt it. That's an election year. 

Glenn Hubbard, one of Mitt Romney’s economic advisers in his bid for the presidency, wrote in the Financial Times that deductions for mortgage interest, charitable giving, or employer-sponsored health care could be scaled back among the wealthiest.

 For more about Glenn watch Inside Job.

Behravesh said that is worth considering. “To me, this is a perfect opportunity for meaningful tax reform,” he said. “Do we really need to subsidize millionaires’ homes or vacation homes?”

 Why are we in the first place?

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And as predicted here during the campaign:

"Red-state Democrats may defect on budget plan; Some not ready to commit to Obama proposal" by Kathleen Hunter  |  Bloomberg News, November 20, 2012

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats, cautiously optimistic about prospects for a deficit-reduction deal, may have to contend with wariness from seven members who face 2014 reelection campaigns in states Mitt Romney won Nov. 6.

Some of those seven Democrats, including North Carolina’s Kay Hagan and Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu, say they aren’t ready to commit to President Obama’s proposals for boosting tax revenue. Instead, Hagan isn’t ruling out support for extending the George W. Bush-era tax cuts for top earners. Landrieu said she opposes eliminating tax breaks for oil companies.

 But thank God the Senate stayed in Democrat hands, huh? 

Possible Democratic defections heighten the need for Senate majority leader Harry Reid to woo Republican support for a deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff — $607 billion in tax increases and spending cuts set to begin taking effect in January.

Lame-duck Republican Senators Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Olympia Snowe of Maine, and Richard Lugar of Indiana are potential candidates. 

 Just wondering why the Dems didn't ram through the changes with a lame duck after the 2010 elections, aren't you? Could have avoided the cliff, right? 

The 60-vote threshold for advancing major legislation in the Senate presents a hurdle for any fiscal agreement. Electoral pressures in the Senate — where Democrats will defend 20 seats in 2014, compared with 13 for Republicans — are among the dynamics that make counting votes complicated. Democrats control the chamber, 53 to 47, and will gain two seats in January....

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 And off the cliff I go, aaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!