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- Plan is new spending, which undercuts congressional appropriators and kills sequestration
- Sequestration DA 1NC 2/3
- Credit rating is key to heg—future economic and military success
Sequestration DASequestration DA 1NC 1/3Budget sequester is coming now – Reid guaranteesScott Wong, 5-24-2012, “GOP hits back at Reid threat on sequester,” Politico, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76749.html Reid was defiant in an interview with POLITICO this week, saying that without new revenues, he wouldn’t accept GOP efforts to roll back the spending cuts, part of the Budget Control Act, which Obama signed into law last August. The supercommittee had an opportunity to strike a deal on deficit reduction last fall and avoid the sequester, but the bipartisan House-Senate panel struck out. “I am not going to back off the sequestration,” Reid said in the interview. “That’s the law we passed. We did it because it wouldn’t make things easy for us. It made it so we would have to do something. And if we didn’t, these cuts would kick in.” It’s almost certain Reid has the 40 votes needed to block GOP attempts to undo the sequester, which will hit the Pentagon with $110 billion in cuts on Jan. 1. Last week, nearly 60 senators voted to reject Rep. Paul Ryan’s House-passed budget, which would postpone any cuts to defense spending. Plan is new spending, which undercuts congressional appropriators and kills sequestrationNPR, 10-23-2011, “Congressional Strongmen, Stripped Of Superpowers,” http://www.npr.org/2011/10/23/141616737/congressional-strongmen-stripped-of-superpowers Since the supercommittee was formed in August to find federal deficit cuts, the House and Senate appropriations committees have seen their responsibilities wane. But not too long ago, they were the most exclusive clubs in Congress and it took years to get assigned to one. Appropriations 'Lost Its Luster' Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., finally landed a spot on the House Appropriations Committee last fall. That's because few others wanted the job — he jokes to Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered. "It's kind of lost its luster for most people," Flake says. In a recent issue of the The New Republic, reporter Eliza Gray says it is quite possibly "the least fun time to be an appropriator on the record." For most of the past few decades, appropriators decided how the federal budget would be spent, and consequently had a lot of power. In fact, the subcommittee chairmen were known around Capitol Hill as the "cardinals" — like those who run the Catholic Church. But over the summer, President Obama and congressional Republicans took that power away from appropriations and put six Democrats and six Republicans on the new Joint Selection Committee on Deficit Reduction — the official name for the supercommittee — to do the work instead. Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, says "the supercommittee is an indictment of the whole congressional process." "It shows that the system is dysfunctional today," Moran says. "What we have is a system that's been turned upside down." 'The System Worked' Moran remembers when being on the committee was a mark of serious power. After Mt. Saint Helens erupted in 1980, Sen. Warren Magnuson, D-Wa., who was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee at the time, was able to get $1 billion in emergency aid for his home state. Another senator, Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, wondered why he couldn't get that kind of money, Moran recalls. "Sen. Inouye said, 'Maggie [Magnuson], I have thousands of volcanos. Why can't I get a billion dollars for each volcano?' And Maggie put his hand on Dan Inouye's hand, who was young at the time, and said, 'Danny, your time will come.' "Well, Danny's time has come. He takes very good care of Hawaii. You know, the system worked," Moran says. Although appropriators earned a reputation for pork-barrel politics, Moran says that's an oversimplification. He says major projects we now take for granted could never get off the ground because the Republican leadership has banned so-called earmarks. Moran points to a project he successfully funded while on the committee — fixing the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, a major thoroughfare that connects Virginia to Maryland. "We pushed for three years to get that earmark in place. We did it. And the whole country benefits," he says. "We're proud of it. But there was no conceivable way you could have ever built the Woodrow Wilson Bridge to handle the East Coast traffic unless it had been an earmark." Biding Time In addition to their diminished power, House appropriators have been displaced from their room in the Capitol with a view of the National Mall; a women's bathroom is being built there. Moran says it's symbolic. "It's a diminution of the power of appropriators," Moran says. Rep. Flake agrees. "I'm not saying there's not things to do. But I think we could certainly make use of our time better if we were conducting more oversight and doing more hearings," Flake says. Flake and his fellow appropriators are more or less biding their time until Nov. 23, when the supercommittee has to present Congress with a spending plan. The plan is expected to lay out billions of dollars in spending cuts. "That's pretty sad commentary on where we've come to as a Congress in not being able to prioritize, but if it's the only way we can cut spending, then that may be what we have to do," Flake says. Sequestration DA 1NC 2/3Following through with sequestration is key to maintaining the US AAA credit ratingDaniel Bases, Staff Writer, 12-22-2011, “Fitch Warns U.S. Of Credit Downgrade Unless Debt Problem Is Solved,” Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/22/fitch-warns-us-credit-downgrade-debt-problem-solved_n_1164972.html Fitch Ratings on Wednesday warned again that the United States' rising debt burden was not consistent with maintaining the country's top AAA credit rating, but said there would likely be no decision on whether to cut the rating before 2013. Last month, Fitch changed its U.S. credit rating outlook to negative from stable, citing the failure of a special congressional committee to agree on at least $1.2 trillion in deficit-reduction measures. "Federal debt will rise in the absence of expenditure and tax reforms that would address the challenges of rising health and social security spending as the population ages," Fitch said in a statement. "The high and rising federal and general government debt burden is not consistent with the U.S. retaining its 'AAA' status despite its other fundamental sovereign credit strengths," the ratings agency said. In a new fiscal projection, Fitch said at least $3.5 trillion of additional deficit reduction measures will be required to stabilize the federal debt held by the public at around 90 percent of gross domestic product in the latter half of the current decade. Fitch, when it lowered its outlook to negative, had said it was giving the U.S. government until 2013 to come up with a "credible plan" to tackle its ballooning budget deficit or risk a downgrade from the AAA status. "A key task of an incoming Congress and administration in 2013 is to formulate a credible plan to reduce the budget deficit and stabilize the federal debt burden. Without such a strategy, the sovereign rating will likely be lowered by the end of 2013," Fitch reiterated. Rival ratings agency Standard & Poor's cut its credit rating on the United States to AA-plus from AAA on August 5, citing concerns over the government's budget deficit and rising debt burden as well as the political gridlock that nearly led to a default. On November 23, Moody's Investors Service, warned that its top level Aaa credit rating for the United States could be in jeopardy if lawmakers were to backtrack on $1.2 trillion in automatic deficit cuts that are set to be made over 10 years. The plan for automatic cuts was triggered after the special congressional committee failed to reach an agreement on deficit reduction. Moody's said any pullback from the agreed automatic cuts to take effect starting in 2013 could prompt it to take action. Credit rating is key to heg—future economic and military successReuters, 11-12-2011, “Some see hope as US battles to bring debt under control”, Gulf News, http://gulfnews.com/business/economy/some-see-hope-as-us-battles-to-bring-debt-under-control-1.928435 The narrative of US decline gained force over the past year as Washington's domestic battles over government spending led another ratings agency, Standard & Poor's, to downgrade the country's AAA credit rating in August. Robert Hormats, the State Department's top official for international economic policy, said the chief US challenge now was to refocus its spending on education and infrastructure to keep up with cash-flush competitors such as China, which are rapidly modernising. "Whether we're the primary, competitive power in the world 10 to 15 years from now depends on what I call the law of long lead times," Hormats said. "We have to demonstrate our political system can deliver results... We need to invest." Those investments could depend on decisions reached by the congressional "super committee" tasked with finding at least $1.2 trillion in budget savings within two weeks. With Republicans and Democrats at odds over tax hikes and the future of mandated spending for social safety net programmes, such as Social Security and Medicare, discretionary spending on everything from foreign aid to the military is in focus. Most participants at the Summit agreed that how the debate is resolved could have a major impact on US global power. Republican Senator Lamar Alexander said the US future as a global power depended on a deficit reduction agreement, saying bluntly that "failure is not an option." "Our standing will suffer worldwide most if we can't take care of business at home, and the first order of business at home is to stop borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend," he said. 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