The Sequester Strikes its First Victims!

[Spexxvet]

Republican governor of Virginia speaks.

McDonnell: Well this is going to be a slow ramp-up of the impacts in Virginia. Although, since we've already cut $487 billion out of the defense budget over the last couple of years, we've already seen a dip in our sales tax revenue from the defense procurement areas of the state, because we know that contractors are doing a little bit less business.

My biggest concern, of course, is the impact on our men and women in uniform. Particularly with a lot of Virginia kids right now in Iraq. When you cut $1 trillion over ten years, you know you're going to have some impacts in readiness and for us, it's jobs.

The first tangible impact of the sequester will be next month when DOD civilians get laid off or have their work hours reduced by about 20 percent. So I think it's by mid-April, when that's expected.

The governor says that cutting the budget will hurt employment, especially in Virginia.

Other repubicans say that increasing taxes on the wealthy will hurt employment

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.), on Fox News, Nov. 8, 2012 says
“The president wants to raise taxes on the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. But what that does is it net loses 700,000 more American jobs that are really from people who need those jobs.”

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Nov. 9
“According to Ernst & Young, raising the top rates would destroy nearly 700,000 jobs in our country.”

McDonnell: Well, I'm not saying don't cut defense. I'm saying, make it a balanced cutting approach. First of all, it's got to be cuts, not tax raises. Everybody understood that sequester was about $1.2 trillion in cuts. With the President running around saying that we need to increase taxes is absolutely the wrong approach. Those new revenues came in January 1, with $800 billion in new revenue, this is about cuts.

The republican stance: Cutting budgets, except on programs that help the poor, will increase unemployment, and raising taxes on the wealthy will increase unemployment, so the only option is to take away the people who have the least to be taken.