Page 17 - The Sequester News Today

The cost of furloughs brought on by the sequester. that was after tens of thousands of flights experienced light to heavy delays, on-time arrivals dropped by nearly 10% across the country. according to an airline industry group, airlines lost about $6 million a day from the cost of the delays. the faa expects all systems to be completely back to normal by sunday evening. president obama had planned to sign the relief into law immediately. a spelling error has delayed it until today. you have to ...

Frankly arent as critical as some of the other issues that are being hurt by the sequester. >> david, the president really addressed what he feels the gop lawmakers are really worried about in these budget cuts. because one has to say, how can they have a blind eye to how this impacts regular, ordinary people and those that are depending on some of these things? heres what the president said is what theyre really worried about. >> theyre worried about their politics. its tough. their base thinks...

But to get out of the sequester they would have to agree to some degree of tax revenue increases and give up some of their tax cuts for the wealthy. >> right. >> and as you know, as weve seen now, when it comes to this calculation, the republicans are generally saying, you know, pentagon cuts, you know, taxes for the rich, well go with pentagon cuts. because we dont care about head start, meals on wheels, public defenders. you know, federal parks and all that. we never cared to -- cared about th...

Surprise that congress is held in such contempt when members wont bat an eyelid if the elderly, as you say, lose 4 million meals won wheels, or 100,000 children lose their places under head-start. but if you delay house majority leader eric cantor at the airport, then he will pass legislation quicker than he pockets money from the nra. >> well, martin, theres no doubt about it. look, all these members of congress were leaving the capitol for a week to go home when we should be here working on fi...

Im an optimistic person, and im hopeful. but i think its going to take a lot more of what he did today. frankly, the republican position on the sequester has been dizzying. at first they hated it. it was a sledge mahammer. it was going to be devastate ing. then they decided they liked it. now they decided these parts of it they dont like and theyre going to blame the president for that piece. i think he really has to keep highlighting what the sequester means not just to air travel, but to a who...

Is it that they are afraid of right wing primaries and they just cant find the courage to stand up to the right wing of their party who may challenge them? >> you know, im not sure theyre out of touch and theyre doing something that they dont want to be doing on their own. its possible that the president made a miscalculation early on with this deal. the whole point of the sequester, if you go back a year and a half to the -- you know, the debt ceiling debacle, was that wed come up with this pun...

Know. what did they hear from the russians. how did they flag it. how did they proceed. certainly, janet napolitano has told us they were flagged when they left the country. however, was pinged when he returned. and the question is, well, did the russian authorities -- when did they let us know about this conversation that he had with his mother that they picked up on, after he returned, before he returned? thats going to be difficult to know. these are really important questions that some of th...

Boxed himself in with those comments. we know that hes also reached tout russia. he just made a phone call to vladimir putin yesterday trying to get him on board to convince assad to step down, at the very least, relinquish his campaign against his own people. i think, chris, youre going to also hear questions about the sequester, as you know. congress just passed a bill. it took them two days to pass bill to cut off the part of the sequester to end furloughs of air traffic controllers basically...

>> well, the speaker has not lifted a finger. he hasnt even allowed us, as i said, to have a vote on a proposal weve got in the light of day. if you want to vote against it, if you want to vote against relieving the sequester, go ahead. at least let us have a vote. what we said was we should get rid of some excessive agriculture subsidies. we should get rid of some of the tax breaks for millionaires. and by doing that, we can replace the sequester. get the same amount of deficit reduction withou...

Laughable. they wont do that. now, we know that the president, much to your own discomfort on issues like social security, has tried to reach an agreement with speaker boehner, but he simply wont do it. and here was the presidents response just a short time ago. take a listen, sir. >> the only way the problem does get fixed is if both parties sit down and they say, how are we going to make sure were reducing our deficit sensibly? how are we making sure were investing in things like rebuilding ou...