Cuts at Barry´s discretion? My prediction is that the entire cut will come out of the military.

If you read the article, the cuts must retain the balance, but can be distributed differently.

I´m not prepared in the least to allow Obama ´flexibility´ in this anymore than I am comforted by his unilateral reduction in our nuclear defense capabilities. MacDaddy has too much power now to decide who wins and who loses as he doles what would just be more of his ´stash´.

My congressman is the Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee between the House and the Senate. He advises that the President already has that power but denies it. They are ready to formalize it by Bill on an hour´s notice.

I think that the truth is that the White House doesn´t want to effect the baseline for future budgets.

Semper Fi

This is the foolish idea that if Barry makes the decision he will get the blame. If they give Barry this decision he will cut from all the most critical places to make the pain immediate and widely experienced by the whole population and the blame will be on the republicans. These cuts are not even real cuts but only lower increases than the left wants and they could be made without anyone noticing but that is not what Barry will do. He is in permanent campaign mode.

What if they cut and no one noticed?

These people are idiots. Barry is now being shown by his media for what he really is and Team Rino throws him a life preserver.

Amazing. Does anyone else see the absurdity of this? The Republican Establishment is trying to pass off the responsibility for cutting spending. Forget that in reality its not cutting a thing, but think of the stupidity of the message it conveys.


The very people who campaign and claim to be all about lowering the growth of government and its spending are now trying to hide behind the skirt of the president when they get the chance to pretend to do so.

I don´t think it possible that a better example of why the Republican Party is imploding can be found.

Wonderful idea, then we will know exactly who to give credit to for each cut.

These cuts in the rate of growth are so miniscule it´s all just kabuki theater which, given the hysterical reactions of the press, is a game Republicans need to play.

Fine, let Teleprompter Jesus choose what to cut.

I agree with a previous post. We do not need to give President Obama any more flexibility. Congress needs to grow a spine use the budgetary powers that the Constitution gives them.

Barry Soetoro is an evil, vindictive child. If given discretion, he will cut funding in the way that hurts America first. He would happily throw grandma off the cliff and give support to NPR and the NEA to keep the propaganda flowing.

This is all kabuki for the lo-fo voter.
All agencies and branches of the government already have the ability to manage where they make the sequestration cuts without massive furloughing of employees, shutdown of programs, etc. Very simply, they can defer filling employment vacancies and the award of new contracts.
But Obama and Pals want to inflict the maximum pain on the American public in order to blame the Repubs. And so, they will abrogate the proper administration of their offices and seek highly visible, highly contentious cuts.
This bill has ZERO CHANCE of passing through the Senate.
But the Repubs can always claim that sequestration was Obama´s idea, and they passed a bill to allow intelligent decisions to made on where/how to apply those cuts, but the Dems killed the bill.
The Repubs then get to say that the reason that flights are being delayed because of TSA security cut backs, or 400,000 civilian DOD employees got notices of potential furloughs, or why the USS Truman didn´t deploy IS BECAUSE THE DEMOCRATS INTENTIONALLY MADE THAT CHOICE FOR POLITICAL GAMESMANSHIP.

If the authority is given to the president, he will make it worse for the people that will get the most news coverage; and then blame the Republicans...it is getting tiresome.

1. This admin has still refused to publish a budget

2. Overall spending this year will be MORE than last year.

3. All these "cuts" are simply reductions in proposed increases.

4. Let´s keep our eye on the ball, and not be distracted with false premises.

The words republican and brilliant do not belong in the same sentence. If there is a way to cave or backdown the republicans will find it.

I agree #17. There is no evidence anyone can point to that shows the GOP ever did the right thing at the right time. They are democrats in training. They want to appear to be opposing the dems but they really don`t care one way or the other. The GOP has battered woman syndrome.

I am sure some RINO will screw it up.

Call me crazy but isn´t it simplest to assign a 5% cut to 2012 spending levels at all gov´t dept.´s?