Obama Seeks Sequester Scare

By Chris Stirewalt

Power Play

Published February 19, 2013

FoxNews.com

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“[Do Republicans] protect investments in education, health care and national defense or do they continue to prioritize and protect tax loopholes that benefit the very few at the expense of middle and working class Americans?”

-- White House statement on pending, automatic spending cuts.

Would Republicans rather your house burn down than raise taxes on rich people?

Today, president Obama is certainly suggesting that they would. He is appearing with firefighters and other first responders to renew his call for tax hikes on top earners to offset part of automatic spending cuts set to kick in two weeks hence.

Obama’s argument is that Janet Napolitano and her team at the Department of Homeland Security will have no choice but to cut off subsidies for local fire departments once the cuts take effect, forcing layoffs at firehouses.

Now, Napolitano presumably could cut other parts of her agency, ammunition orders, for instance. But it wouldn’t be so dramatic for the president to pose with a case of shotgun shells as it would to appear with people who run into burning buildings for a living.

Taxes went up for every American worker this year, and Obama won a special targeted tax rate hike on high-income households. The size of the targeted tax hike that Obama spent most of post-election political capital on was about the same size as what will be vacuumed out of federal spending this year: about $85 billion.

While Obama argued that the economy was strong enough to weather the tax hikes, he says that it cannot endure spending reductions of the same size. In fact, he says more taxes would be preferable to any reduction in federal outlays. The president, after all, would like to see yet more taxes to finance yet more spending.

But aside from the economic argument, Obama is warning that unless Republicans agree to more taxes, people will die.

The emergency personnel with the president today are the embodiment of Obama’s preferred form of economic stimulus: government workers (who, not coincidentally, are the most important part of his political base).

But aside from the economic argument, Obama is warning that unless Republicans agree to more taxes, people will die. Obama warns of understaffed fire departments, furloughed food inspectors and vacancies in the agency that tracks loose nuclear material. He says he is for having the wealthy pay “their fair share” while Republicans, must prefer raging infernos, tainted food and radioactive waste.

Bipartisan budget mavens Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson have put on offer today an updated version of their debt reduction plan. It’s a broad-spectrum fiscal reform that includes cuts, taxes and changes to entitlement programs.

This is the kind of plan that moderates have been begging for. Rather than crashing over fiscal cliff after fiscal cliff, Simpson and Bowles are proposing a decade-long plan to set things on a sustainable course.

Obama, though, torpedoed any hope of a big plan with his tax January tax hikes. Obama had the chance to do what Simpson and Bowles propose when House Speaker John Boehner came to him with an offer of higher taxes through lower deductions for the rich.

Obama flatly refused, insisting on a rate hike, and now wants the deduction money. This exhausted the Republican capacity for compromise on their ideological core issue of keeping tax rates low.

But Obama bets that if he frightens voters with firefighter layoffs, etc., Republicans can be shamed into raising taxes again or at least set themselves up for a midterm defeat.

And Now, A Word From Charles

“The Keystone issue is the most open and shut case I have ever seen. Not only will it reduce our dependence on Hugo Chavez, in the Middle East, we would get it from Canada, and not only would it be an insult if we sort of slam the door on Canada, our closest ally, but refusing the pipeline, or not building it would have zero effect on the environment.”

-- Charles Krauthammer on “Special Report with Bret Baier.”

How One 75-Year-Old Soybean Farmer Could Deal A Blow To Monsanto’s Empire Today

By Aviva Shen posted from ThinkProgress Health on Feb 19, 2013 at 3:00 pm

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a 75-year-old soybean farmer’s appeal against biotech giant Monsanto, in a case that could permanently reshape the genetically modified (GM) crop industry. Victor “Hugh” Bowman has been battling the corporation since 2007, when Monsanto sued him for violating their patent protection by purchasing second-generation GM seeds from a grain elevator. An appeals court ruled in favor of Monsanto, and despite the Obama administration’s urging to let the decision stand, the nine justices will hear Bowman make his case today. 

Monsanto is notorious among farmers for the company’s aggressive investigations and pursuit of farmers they believe have infringed on Monsanto’s patents. In the past 13 years, Monsanto has sued 410 farmers and 56 small farm businesses, almost always settling out of court (the few farmers that can afford to go to trial are always defeated). These farmers were usually sued for saving second-generation seeds for the next harvest — a basic farming practice rendered illegal because seeds generated by GM crops contain Monsanto’s patented genes.

Monsanto’s winning streak hinges on a controversial Supreme Court decision from 1981, which ruled on a 5-4 split that living organisms could be patented as private property. As a result of that decision, every new generation of GM seeds — and their self-replicating technology — is considered Monsanto’s property.

Unfortunately, second- and third-generation seeds are very hard to track, which may explain why Monsanto devotes $10 million a year and 75 staffers to investigating farmers for possible patent violations. Seeds are easily carried by birds or blown by the wind into fields of non-GM seeds, exposing farmers who have never bought seeds from Monsanto to lawsuits. Organic and conventional seeds are fast becoming extinct — 93 percent of soybeans, 88 percent of cotton, and 86 percent of corn in the US are grown from Monsanto’s patented seeds. A recent study discovered that at least half of the organic seeds in the US are contaminated with some genetically modified material.

Bowman’s appeal gives the Supreme Court an opportunity to determine whether or not Monsanto is using patent enforcement to control their monopoly on a vital resource. As GM seeds become more ubiquitous, farmers who want to avoid Monsanto’s strict patents have few alternatives. As a recently released Center for Food Safety report notes, the concentration of market power among Monsanto and a handful of other companies has led to skyrocketing seed prices and less innovation by smaller firms:

USDA data show that since the introduction of GE seed, the average cost of soybean seed to plant one acre has risen by a dramatic 325 percent, from $13.32 to $56.58. Similar trends exist for corn and cotton seeds: cotton seeds spiked 516 percent from 1995-2011 and corn seed costs rose 259 percent over the same period. [...] USDA economists have found that seed industry consolidation has reduced research and likely resulted in fewer crop varieties on offer: “Those companies that survived seed industry consolidation appear to be sponsoring less research relative to the size of their individual markets than when more companies were involved… Also, fewer companies developing crops and marketing seeds may translate into fewer varieties offered.”

Furthermore, emerging evidence indicates that Monsanto has hardly perfected the technology. A core argument for GM seeds in the 1990s claimed they would reduce chemical pesticide use because the plants themselves would repel pests and weeds. But studies have confirmed the spread of so-called “superweeds” that have developed a resistance to Monsanto’s gene, leading farmers to deploy even heavier doses of herbicides like Monsanto’s own product, Roundup. Another new report debunked the company’s argument that GM seeds would have higher yields; in fact, two of Monsanto’s most popular genes caused yields to drop.

Despite the mounting evidence against their products, the biotech industry enjoys a cozy relationship with government regulators. In December, the Justice Department abruptly dropped their investigation into anti-competitive practices in the industry without so much as a press release. The stalled Farm Bill also contains generous provisions that would allow these companies to put their products on the market with cursory or no review by the USDA.

Today’s oral argument is a study in these intertwined interests: the Obama administration is presenting their own defense of Monsanto, and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was once a Monsanto lawyer (but will not recuse himself from Bowman’s case). Still, the same high court that enabled the current state of American agriculture in 1981 now finds itself in a position to check Monsanto’s power — or help them tighten their hold on the industry.

Jackson-area woman gives birth to 10-pound baby same day she learns she is pregnant

By Danielle Salisbury | Danielle_Salisbury@mlive.com
on February 12, 2013 at 6:30 AM, updated February 12, 2013 at 11:41 AM

 J. Scott Park | jpark4@mlive.com

Mike and Linda Ackley of Jackson were surprised by the birth of their daughter, Kimberly Kay, on Friday. Linda, who gave birth to the over 10 pound girl, found out Friday morning she was pregnant and gave birth that evening. The couple never thought they would be able to conceive a child. (J. Scott Park | Mlive.com) 2-11-13: Mike and Linda Ackley surprised by new baby gallery (8 photos)

JACKSON, MI – Linda Ackley went to Allegiance Health Friday morning thinking she had a hernia.

By Friday night, she gave birth to a 10-pound baby.

“Some people have nine months to prepare. I had (15) hours,” her husband, Mike, said on Monday, Feb. 11.

Unaware of her pregnancy until the day she delivered, Linda Ackley, 44, of Summit Township underwent an emergency C-section on Friday, Feb. 8.

Kimberly Kay Ackley, the couple’s first child, was born at 11:20 p.m. She is normal and healthy, and weighed 10 pounds, 1 ounce, Mike and Linda Ackley said.

The girl and her mother were discharged from the hospital Monday afternoon.

Linda Ackley’s sister, Rosie Konopka, 48, of Jackson, drove them, and stopped at the Jackson County Courthouse, where Mike Ackley, 45, works as a security guard.

A stream of employees came to catch a glimpse of the girl. They called her beautiful, admired her tiny features and cooed about her full head of dark hair. Mike Ackley proudly carried her about the hallways.

“She is our miracle baby,” said Linda Ackley, who never thought she could have children. Two years ago, she had an infection and significant abdominal surgery.

Her survival alone was a blessing.

When she first told Mike Ackley the news of their baby, her eyes were filled with tears, her husband said.

It is good he was sitting, she said.

“I wish someone would have taken a picture of my face,” Mike Ackley said.

Calling the development surprising seems inadequate, he said. “That doesn’t even come close.”

Last week, Linda Ackley went to the doctor because she had some bloating in her abdomen.

Believing she might have a hernia, the doctor sent her to an Allegiance Health facility for a computerized tomography or CT scan.

The scan revealed she was pregnant.

She would deliver in three to four weeks, medical professionals at first told the Ackleys.

After a second ultrasound, however, the couple learned Linda Ackley had carried the baby a full term, 40 or more weeks.

The hospital scheduled a C-section.

“I was happy and shocked at the same time, and scared,” Mike Ackley said.

He and his wife have been married for 24 years. They met at Jackson High School and became a couple when he was a junior and she was a sophomore.

They imagined children were impossible; they had not taken measures to protect against pregnancy and the babies never came.

In February 2011, Linda Ackley contracted necrotizing fasciitis, a bacterial infection that attacks soft tissue.

Mike Ackley thought she was having a stroke.

Her blood-sugar level was far above normal and her immune system was shutting down, Linda Ackley wrote under the heading “Survivors” on the National Necrotizing Fasciitis Foundation website.

She had diabetes, doctors determined, and she spent about a week in a coma and on a ventilator. Some of the muscles in her stomach had to be removed.

Doctors did not think she would live, Mike Ackley said.

“God wanted me here for something,” Linda Ackley said.

Looking back, she said she confused the baby’s movements for expanding and contracting muscles and twitching nerves caused by her surgery.

It never occurred to her she was pregnant, she said.

Her menstrual periods always have been irregular. She was not in pain and did not notice significant weight gain.

At the hospital, she and her husband made phone calls, informing family members of the pending birth of their first-born.

All were in disbelief. They called it a joke, Mike Ackley said. “Who can make this up?”

Konopka at first thought maybe Linda Ackley hid the pregnancy, but Linda Ackley is too honest to keep such a secret, to spin such a tale. Her excitement would have blown it, she said.

“They always wanted children,” said Konopka, who has two daughters, a son and four grandchildren.

The couple is good with them and others. “So, I am so glad they have one of their own,” she said.

Just last month, Konopka and Linda Ackley, two of four sisters, lost their mother, Sandra Linabury, to cancer, and Kimberly shares Linabury’s middle name.

Her birth brings joy at what has been a sad time, they said, sitting near the courthouse entrance.

As all the number of well-wishers dwindled, they prepared to go home for the first time.

The apartment is not prepared; for years it has been occupied by only the Ackleys and their pets, but plenty of people are offering help. They have been getting donations and gifts from family members and others.

Kimberly was bundled Monday in a car seat given to the Ackleys by a cousin.

Clothing Carousel, a consignment shop on Franklin Street, donated two bags of clothes.

There will be other adjustments too.

“I got to get used to saying mommy,” Linda Ackley said, and told her husband how odd it felt to recently make an appointment for “her daughter.”

Kimberly already has a “mommy’s little miracle” T-shirt.

Mike Ackley is feeling fortunate. There have been two extraordinary events in two years.

“First my wife came back to me, and now, I have a baby girl.”

 

Mike Ackley, a security guard at the Jackson County Courthouse holds his new daughter, Kimberly, on Tuesday afternoon at the courthouse.

 

Mike Ackley, left, watches as 12th District Court Traffic Department employees check out his new daughter on Monday afternoon.

 

Linda Ackley talks with well wishers at the Jackson County Courthouse on Monday.

Multiple injuries confirmed in enormous gas blast in Kansas City

NBC News

The explosion occurred Tuesday, Feb. 19, in Century Club Plaza in Kansas City, Mo.

By M. Alex Johnson, staff writer, NBC News

At least five people were seriously injured when a car struck a gas main Tuesday evening in an upscale business and shopping district of Kansas City, Mo., authorities told NBC News.

Kansas City police said the explosion occurred about 6 p.m. (7 p.m. ET) outside JJ's Restaurant in Country Club Plaza downtown. Enormous flames tore into the night sky outside the restaurant, which was at the center of the fire and was destroyed, NBC station KSHB of Kansas City reported.

Fire officials told NBC News that a secondary explosion occurred shortly afterward. They had no further details. Buses were sent to evacuate residents of a nearby residential and apartment complex.

"Get out! You are not safe here! Please!" rescue crews could be heard urging people who were trying to get a look at the scene.

At least 11 ambulances responded, fire officials said. Five people with serious injuries were being transported to Saint Luke's Hospital, the hospital told NBC News. Other people were reported to be on their way to other hospitals, which said they had no details yet but had set up command centers

Jason Fulp, a spokesman for Missouri Gas Energy, told NBC News that he had no immediate information on the blast. "We're trying to get our arms around it," he said.

Witnesses told KSHB that they smelled natural gas in the area of the restaurant at least an hour before the explosion.

The explosion occurred at during the dinner hour at JJ's Restaurant, a 27-year-old Kansas City institution. JJ's is widely regarded as one of the best dinner spots in the Midwest, earning a 93 rating from Zagat's, and its wine cellar has been listed by The Wine Spectator as one of the finest in the world.

Carlo Dallaverson, Sossy Dombourian, Gina Gentilesco and Zoya Khan of NBC News contributed to this report.

This is a breaking story. Please check back for developments.

Thousands protest Keystone pipeline

Activists marched in Washington to protest the environmental risk of the Keystone XL pipeline. Jeff Glor reports.

PHOTOS: 35,000 Protesters Demand Immediate Climate Action At ‘Largest Climate Rally In U.S. History’

By Rebecca Leber on Feb 17, 2013 at 4:45 pm

Credit: 350.org

On Sunday, an estimated crowd of 35,000 people joined the Forward On Climate rally in Washington, DC, where protesters delivered a clear message to President Obama: Take immediate action on climate change by rejecting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Organizers of the rally described as the “largest in U.S. history” also called on the president to issue overdue Clean Air Act standards to limit carbon pollution from power plants.

At the rally, 350.org President Bill McKibben said the “easiest, simplest, purest action” Obama could take on the climate is to reject”this long fuse to one of the biggest carbon bombs on earth,” the Keystone XL pipeline.

View more photos from today’s rally:

Credit: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

Unexpected Letter From ER Doctor May Make You Tear Up (PHOTO)

The Huffington Post  |  By Hayley Hudson Posted: 02/09/2013 2:46 pm EST  |  Updated: 02/12/2013 1:34 am EST

This letter from my late mother's doctor has changed my life

 

True love and compassion aren't easy to ignore.

This week, a 24-year-old Redditor shared a letter received just after the death of his mother. The event, despite being difficult, brought an unexpected source of condolence -- a personal note from a physician who had never contacted a patient's family before.

"The letter was written for my father," he told The Huffington Post on Friday. "He stayed by her side until the very end."

The letter reads:

Dear Mr. (removed),

I am the Emergency Medicine physician who treated your wife Mrs (removed) last Sunday in the Emergency Department at (hospital). I learned only yesterday about her passing away and wanted to write to you to express my sadness. In my twenty years as a doctor in the Emergency Room, I have never written to a patient or a family member, as our encounters are typically hurried and do not always allow for more personal interaction.

However, in your case, I felt a special connection to your wife (removed), who was so engaging and cheerful in spite of her illness and trouble breathing. I was also touched by the fact that you seemed to be a very loving couple. You were highly supportive of her, asking the right questions with calm, care and concern. From my experience as a physician, I find that the love and support of a spouse or a family member is the most soothing gift, bringing peace and serenity to those critically ill.

I am sorry for your loss and I hope you can find comfort in the memory of your wife’s great spirit and of your loving bond. My heartfelt condolences go out to you and your family.

(removed), MD

According to the Redditor, his mother had breast cancer. A month ago, breathing difficulties landed her in the hospital, and 16 hours later, she passed away. 

Surprisingly, the doctor who wrote the letter had never met or treated his mother until that day.

"If my mother were alive to see this, she would want readers to reflect on the power of showing compassion towards a total stranger," he told HuffPost.

"The support I got from Reddit was amazing -- doctors, nurses and other Redditors who have lost their mothers to cancer were all shocked and amazed that the doctor took the time to write such a heartfelt, meaningful letter," he added.

Simpson-Bowles 2.0 and Its Sacred Cows


—By Kevin Drum
| Tue Feb. 19, 2013 10:45 AM PST


All morning I've been trying to decide whether I should care about the release of Simpson-Bowles 2.0. As you can guess from its name, this is yet another plan for deficit reduction from the folks who failed to get bipartisan agreement for their first plan.

So in one sense: who cares? Deficit reduction plans are a dime a dozen. There's really nothing special about releasing a fact sheet with a bunch of numbers that add up to some other number. Anyone can do that.

On the other hand: for some reason, Simpson and Bowles get more media attention for their deficit reduction plans than most other people. So I guess we have to take it seriously whether we want to or not.

So far, though, that's not really possible. There's literally no detail in the summary they released today, so there's nothing much to praise or complain about. I'm happy to see them agree that deficit reduction should be done slowly. I'm happy to see them agree that low-income workers and retirees should be protected from benefit cuts. I'm happy to see them agree that the federal tax code should remain at least as progressive as it is now. I'm happy to see them focus on healthcare costs, which really are the driver of most of our future budget problems. And I'm happy to see them name check 


 

farm subsidies and highway funding. But without details, it's impossible to say anything further.

Except for one wee thing. Ezra Klein, bless his heart, managed to figure out the ratio of spending cuts to tax increases (it's buried on page 3, in the phrase "and another quarter from tax reform") and then compare it to Simpson-Bowles 1.0. And guess what? Despite their brave talk about both sides needing to "put their sacred cows on the table," they've apparently decided that conservatives should put a whole lot fewer of their sacred cows on the table than they suggested in their first plan. The chart on the right tells the story. In SB 1.0, deficit reduction was moderately evenly divided between spending cuts and tax increases. In SB 2.0, they've suddenly decided it should be 75 percent spending cuts. That's despite the fact that spending cuts have already been 75 percent of the deficit reduction we've done so far.

Why? Beats me. I guess they figure that conservative sacred cows are a little more sacred than liberal ones. Or something. But even if you take deficit reduction seriously in the first place, this sure makes it hard to take Simpson-Bowles 2.0 seriously as a plan.

UPDATE: Ezra made a correction to the chart, so I've updated the post to reflect that. The new chart shows the spending cuts in SB 1.0 more accurately. When you account for interest savings, they amount to $3.8 trillion, not $2.9 trillion.

Deficit hawks Simpson and Bowles: Skirt the sequester

Susan Davis, USA TODAY12:08p.m. EST February 19, 2013

Congress faces a March 1 deadline to find an alternative to $85 billion in automatic spending cuts from defense and social programs.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Former co-chairs of President Obama's debt commission pitch another way to curb the debt
• Their new proposal would reduce debt by $2.4 trillion over the next decade
• Sequester starting March 1 threatens to slow economic growth and cost jobs

WASHINGTON — Congress must replace upcoming "dumb" across-the-board budget cuts with targeted spending cuts and program changes to help tackle the nation's growing $16.4 trillion debt without restricting economic growth, the former co-chairs of President Obama's debt commission said Tuesday.

Erskine Bowles, Bill Clinton's former chief of staff, and former senator Alan Simpson, a Republican from Wyoming, appeared at a Washington breakfast hosted by Politico on Tuesday to unveil a new proposal for deficit reduction to the tune of $2.4 trillion over the next decade.

The president's 2010 fiscal commission recommended $4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade, but it fell flat in Congress. However, Washington has separately passed as much as $2.7 trillion in deficit reduction measures in the previous two years.

The looming cuts, called a "sequester," will cut defense and social programs across the board starting March 1 — a consequence that threatens to slow economic growth and cost jobs. There is widespread agreement that the cuts will impact the nation's security as well as programs that help the most vulnerable Americans, but there is no consensus on how to replace the cuts with more targeted reductions and reforms.

At the White House Tuesday, Obama used the bully pulpit to pressure Congress to act to avoid the cuts. He placed the blame squarely on Republicans for opposing using any new revenues to replace the sequester "just because you want to protect a special tax interest loophole that the vast majority of Americans don't benefit from. That's the choice. That's the question," Obama said.

STORY: Obama says 'meat cleaver' cuts will hurt economy

Senate Democrats will vote next week on their proposal to replace the sequester with a combination of new revenues from higher taxes on the wealthy and savings from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and cutting some government subsidies. Senate Republicans oppose the plan and say it stands no chance of passage in the GOP-controlled House.

House Republicans have previously approved legislation to replace the sequester with alternative spending cuts, but that bill expired at the end of the 112th Congress in January and they have not offered any new legislation. Republicans oppose raising any new taxes after the year-end "fiscal cliff" deal that secured $620 billion in new revenues by allowing tax cuts to expire for wealthy Americans.

A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said it was "patently false" that Republicans don't want to close tax loopholes, the two parties just differ on what to do with the revenue it raises.

"We view tax reform as an opportunity to make America more competitive and encourage private sector job creation. The president sees tax reform as an opportunity to raise revenue to fund more government," said Brendan Buck.

The two parties are also arguing over who is to blame for the sequester.

The cuts were included as a failsafe in a 2011 budget law forged by Republicans who used the threat of a default to pass a bill to shrink the size of the federal government. The across-the-board cuts were included as a worst-case option that would take effect if Congress didn't adopt a better plan. The White House initially proposed the sequester and Republicans supported it, but at the time both parties did not believe the sequester would actually occur. "This was all designed to say, 'We can't do these bad cuts, let's do something smarter,'" Obama said Tuesday.

In their new plan, Bowles and Simpson propose replacing the sequester with targeted cuts and overhauls that won't disrupt economic growth. The sequester cuts $1.2 trillion indiscriminately over the next decade, with $85 billion in cuts that will kick in March 1 through the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

Bowles conceded to reporters that Congress is likely to miss the March 1 deadline and only when the public starts to feel the effect of the spending cuts will Congress feel pressure to act. "When you guys have to go out here to Reagan airport and you have to wait three hours to go through airport security, you are going to be pissed, and so is everyone else," he said, referencing how the cuts could impact the number of Transportation Security Administration employees at the nation's airports.

In their proposal, Simpson and Bowles caution against sharp austerity measures and oppose cutting low-income programs for the purpose of deficit reduction — two arguments promoted by Democrats. There are also policy proposals that will find support among Republicans, such as calls for entitlement reform, spending limits and overhauling the tax code, including lowering the marginal tax rates for individuals and corporations.

The proposal also calls for indexing the nation's borrowing authority, the debt limit, to the rate of growth once a deficit reduction plan is enacted to forever remove the threat of default due to political fights in Washington. They also endorse using a stingier method called "chained CPI" to calculate Social Security benefits.

The deficit hawks were clear-eyed that their proposal faces long odds for enactment. "Just the idea of a 'Grand Bargain' is at best on life support," said Bowles. "We'll just keep at it," added Simpson.

Army lays out sweeping state-by-state spending cuts
Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY8:07p.m. EST February 19, 2013

(Photo: Evan Vucci, AP)

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Hardest-hit states include Alabama, Texas, Virginia and Pennsylvania
• Army depots face the biggest potential cuts
• Up to 300,000 jobs could be affected

WASHINGTON -- The Army estimates automatic budget cuts scheduled to take effect March 1 will force $15 billion in wage and spending reductions and prompt furloughs or layoffs for 300,000 people nationwide, according to documents obtained by USA TODAY.

Hardest hit states include Alabama, Texas, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Among the least affected: Delaware, Wyoming, Montana and Rhode Island.

The military faces $500 billion in budget cuts over 10 years from sequestration -- automatic budget cuts. The Pentagon anticipates that it will need to slash $46 billion in spending by the end of this fiscal year on Sept. 30 for all the services to meet the requirement for 2013. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said the cuts could render the U.S. military a second-rate power.

"It reaffirms what we have continued to say about the serious implications that sequestration will have on our national defense and broader economic well-being," said Mike Amato, a spokesman for the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.

The cuts will affect every Army installation, according to the documents. States with large bases and military contractors are taking the biggest hits.

Texas, for instance, would face a $2.4 billion economic loss from the Army's budget cuts. Nearly 30,000 Army civilian employees will be furloughed if the cuts go into effect. They will lose $180 million in pay. Texas is home to two of the Army's largest installations -- Fort Hood and Fort Bliss.

"These states are where the soldiers are -- Texas especially," said Thomas Donnelly, a defense expert at the American Enterprise Institute.

President Obama stepped up pressure on Republicans in Congress to help avoid the cuts by passing a plan including other spending cuts and changes in tax policy that would bring extra revenue. The cuts, he said Tuesday, are "not an abstraction — people will lose their jobs."

In testimony last week on Capitol Hill, Gen. Raymond Odierno, the Army chief of staff, told lawmakers that 3,100 temporary employees were being laid off and a hiring freeze had been implemented because of the budget crisis. Maintenance would be canceled and training for soldiers not headed to Afghanistan or South Korea would be curtailed.

The Army's plan might overstate the budget crisis a bit, but it also points out major problems on the horizon, Donnelly said. Since military personnel costs are exempt from sequestration, the cuts fall more heavily in other areas, particularly training. That affects readiness for fighting, he said.

The states most affected have big maintenance depots, which will be shuttered in coming months because of the cuts. Pennsylvania, for example, has two major maintenance depots and is targeted for $751 million in savings. Its Letterkenny Depot upgrades weapons systems, including Patriot missiles.

Alabama's Anniston Army Depot could see $710 million in cuts, while the Corpus Christi Army Depot in Texas could face $799 million in cuts, the documents show.

Closing the depots would stop repairs on 17,000 weapons, 14,000 communication devices and 1,000 vehicles, according to the Army. Purchase orders would also be reduced, affecting 3,000 companies and putting 1,100 at risk of bankruptcy.

The Air Force estimates that furloughs of its civilian employees to deal with the budget cuts will cost them $7.7 billion in wages. Georgia would be hardest hit, with 15,529 employees losing $120 million in pay.

  126277313-Army-cuts by   Peggy Satterfield

---

Erskine Bowles: ‘Being far out front of the president on revenues wasn’t something I wanted to do again’

By Ezra Klein , Updated: February 19, 2013

Erskine Bowles was co-chairman of the Simpson-Bowles commission, and is author, with Alan Simpson, of a series of deficit-reduction plans. His most recent proposal — summarized here — came out Tuesday, and we spoke that afternoon.

Ezra Klein: Your original plan asked for more than $2.5 trillion in taxes over the next decade. This plan asks for about half that. Why did your tax ask fall so far?

Erskine Bowles: A couple of reasons. The point was to start where the two sides were at the end and try to beef it up so that it would actually get debt down below 70 percent of GDP and keep it on a downward path. I think it is fair to say if you go back and look at what was said after we came out with the original Simpson-Bowles plan, the White House and the president hit us up pretty hard for two things. They said we had too much revenue and too much defense cuts. Remember that? If you wanted to do at that point in time at least $4 trillion in deficit reduction, that didn’t leave you many places to go.

We weren’t going to go after income support programs. In addition, as I look at the president’s final offer — it looked to me like if you dressed it up, it was around $1.4 trillion in revenue — if you look at what we’re doing here, and you look at our proposal for revenues in transportation, which you left out, then it’s not too different a number. And being far out front of the president on revenues wasn’t something I wanted to do again. And since I’d already been called back on defense, that only left the other areas.

EK: Why start where the two parties ended in the fiscal deal? The really valuable role, I thought, of the original Simpson-Bowles plan, and of Domenici-Rivlin, was that they created a kind of baseline of how people of good faith from both parties would try to solve our debt problems if they weren’t bound by some of the normal rules of politics. Why go from that to just trying to split the difference between the two parties?

EB: Because we weren’t trying to put out the ideal plan. We were trying to put out something that might be able to get done. If we had all the revenue in there that the president was looking for and the spending cuts Republicans might need in order to get a deal done, then perhaps we could make a material difference in the long-term outlook of the country.

I was so disappointed at the end of last year because we really had a chance to do something meaningful. I called it our magic moment. And we didn’t. And the more I thought about it the more concerned I became. And it just became clearer and clearer to me that to get a balanced, bipartisan deal we’d have to push both sides out of their comfort zones. And that meant more health care that Democrats would have to do and more revenue that Republicans would have to do.

EK: But it doesn’t look to me like the two sides are equal on that. You have about as much revenue as President Obama did in his final offer. But you have more spending cuts than Speaker Boehner did. So why did you make the decision to go up on the spending side but not on the revenue side?

EB: If you look at what we did on a comparison basis to the first plan, we’ll end up doing less on defense and non-defense and we’ll do marginally more on health care. And we had less revenues. And so I think that’s fair. But I think we also tried to stick with the principles we had that we actually stabilized the debt and got in on a downward path and kept it there, that we fundamentally reformed the tax code, that we slowed the rate of health care costs on a per capita basis, that we made Social Security sustainably solvent. And in addition, we wanted to phase in the cuts over a long period of time so we didn’t disrupt a fragile economy. And we wanted to protect low-income folks.

EK: One thing that was present in the original Simpson-Bowles plan but absent here is stimulus. Was there discussion about bringing in more stimulus, perhaps by reinstating the payroll tax cut or adding more to infrastructure investment?

EB: There was no discussion about bringing back the payroll tax cut. That would’ve violated our principle of making Social Security sustainably solvent. Secondly, as it relates to a stimulus, we have always been in favor of a cut-and-invest program, and we remain in favor of that. That means we’ll have somewhat more cuts than the bottom lines suggest, but we’ll reinvest them in other areas.

To give two examples: One thing I wanted to do when I became president of the University of North Carolina system, I wanted us to do our part to improve K-12. I felt we in higher ed were part of the problem, as we produced most of the state’s teachers. So I turned to my staff and said surely there are some federal programs to improve education. And there were more than 80. So do we need two or three good ones? Yes, but we don’t need 82. A second [example] is I believe strongly in federal scientific research. We desperately need to do it in this country so the jobs of the future are here rather than somewhere else. We do about $1.5 billion in federal scientific research at the university. That makes us one of the largest in the country. Is all of it high-value added? No. And that’s true at the other 3,000 colleges and universities that do federal scientific research. We live in a time of more limited resources, and so we have to make those tough choices. Do you buy that?

EK: I do. One thing I liked about the original Simpson-Bowles plan, and about Domenici-Rivlin, was there was a sense that deficit reduction could be an opportunity to do things in a smarter, more sensible way. A disappointment since then has been that the policy results have been raw, dumb deficit reduction with no real reforms or rethinking of priorities.

EB: I agree with that. When somebody asked me about the sequester, I said it’s stupid, stupid, stupid. No business cuts like that when they need to reduce their cost. You go into the budget and you make your cuts surgically in those areas that will have the least adverse effect on productivity. If you look at what’s being cut in the sequester, they’re not the things that are growing at a faster rate than the economy. And that would be something like health care.

EK: One reform you had in the original plan was tax reform. But since then, Republicans have used the idea of tax reform as a way to fight further tax increases, as they say we can’t cut tax expenditures to reduce the deficit because we need those tax expenditures to reform the tax code. So, in that sense, some of those proposals seem to have misfired.

EB: And I countered that today. I said that if you look at the tax expenditures and you add them up over the next 10 years, it’s at least $13 trillion, and more like $15 trillion when you add in inflation. And we’re talking about using $600 billion or maybe a little less for deficit reduction? Give me a break. That leaves plenty of money to spend the money more wisely to lower income tax rates, if that’s what they want to do. To me it’s an easy argument to counter. And if you don’t do it, it places too much burden on other things to cut.

EK: But even if you win that argument, do you think that the tax increases you’re considering are actually enough in the long-run? Given that you and Domenici-Rivlin originally came to much higher revenue numbers, is bringing taxes down so much lower just kicking the can down the road?

EB: I don’t know. I’ve never seen any kind of long-range plan that held a lot of water 20 years out. So I think if we’re smart we’ll go back and revisit this on a regular basis and make the adjustments we need to make. Perhaps we’ll have done too much on health care and too little on revenue. I do know if we start now we can manage this process better.

EK: Speaking of health care, one argument right now is that health-care costs have slowed and we have all these experiments through Obamacare trying to figure out how to keep them low, and so the right move now is to wait a few years and see if health costs remain low and then reevaluate when we both know more about costs but also have more information on what works from Obamacare. But you move in the opposite direction here and increase your health-care savings. Why?

EB: I don’t claim to be an expert. But I do think it is critically important that we are confident that we’re going to control the rate of growth for health care. I don’t know if the current slowdown is structural or cyclical. I always felt when the better numbers came out during President Clinton’s time, I thought people were trying to make the numbers look better at a particular period of time. So I think we should err on the side of being more conservative and slowing the rate of growth. And we can always go back and add them back.

© The Washington Post Company

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What you need to know about the new Simpson-Bowles plan

By Ezra Klein , Updated: February 19, 2013

1) You can download it here.

2) The new plan intends to save $2.4 trillion — which would replace and double the savings of the sequester — beyond the $2.7 trillion in deficit reduction that’s already been enacted. So that’s $5.1 trillion in total deficit reduction.

3) The new plan includes about $600 billion in revenue through tax reform, which would mean total new revenue would be about $1.2 trillion after including the fiscal cliff deal. So-called “chained-CPI”, which increases revenue as well as cutting Social Security benefits, would push that to about $1.3 trillion. That’s around what President Obama proposed in his final offer during the fiscal cliff negotiations, but it’s less than half the new revenue contained in the original Simpson-Bowles plan. So Simpson and Bowles have revised the tax ask way, way down.

A note on that graph: The numbers for Simpson-Bowles 1.0 come from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and they cover 2013-2022 while the numbers for Simpson-Bowles 2.0 cover 2014-2023. Updated numbers for Simpson-Bowles 1.0 would show slightly more in taxes and slightly more in spending cuts. Both sets of numbers count interest savings under spending cuts, as that’s how the original Simpson-Bowles plan counts it.

4) A more detailed comparison isn’t yet possible. What we have so far is an outline, not a plan. We don’t know the size of the discretionary cuts. We don’t know the size of the mandatory cuts. We don’t know any of the policies save for chained-CPI. All of that’s forthcoming. “Right now, all they’ve released is a framework,” says Marc Goldwein, policy director at the Center for a Responsible Federal Budget. “They want to spend a couple of weeks getting comments and input.”

5) The exact numbers haven’t been released yet, but total discretionary spending cuts will be lower than in the original Simpson-Bowles plan, Goldwein tells me.

6) This isn’t meant to be an update to Simpson-Bowles 1.0. Rather, it’s meant to be an outline for a new grand bargain. To that end, Simpson and Bowles began with Obama and Boehner’s final offers from the fiscal cliff deal. That helps explain why their tax ask has fallen so far: Obama’s final tax ask was far lower than what was in the original Simpson-Bowles plan, while Boehner’s tilt towards spending cuts was far greater than what was in the original Simpson-Bowles.

7) That said, while this plan doesn’t include more tax increases than Obama asked for, it does include significantly more than the $1 trillion in spending cuts than Boehner asked for — about $500 to $700 billion more, if I’m reading it right. In increasing the total deficit reduction, Simpson and Bowles have put the weight on the spending side of the budget.

8) In that way, this plan sacrifices the most useful element of the original Simpson-Bowles effort, which was that it created a model — not the only model, of course — for how you might go about reducing the deficit if you weren’t bound by the various promises, interest groups and political constraints of the two parties. This plan, by contrast, is an effort to split the difference between the two parties while amping up the total deficit reduction.

Correction: The original graph didn’t include interest savings for the original Simpson-Bowles plan. It’s been updated.

© The Washington Post Company

Simpson and Bowles release lame “Simpson-Bowles” sequel

Politico loves it, but the new Simpson-Bowles plan is just a waste of everyone's time

By Alex Pareene

 

Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles (Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster)


Would you please do Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson the courtesy of paying attention to their new Simpson-Bowles plan? Yes, today the two deficit vultures released the long-awaited sequel to their other plan, the famous “Simpson-Bowles Plan” (now officially to be referred to as “Simpson-Bowles Episode IV”). The original Simpson-Bowles plan was incredibly popular despite the fact that its actual recommendations weren’t supported by anyone, including the people who always talked about how much they loved it.

This new plan got a big rollout sponsored by Politico, whose Mike Allen hosted and interviewed the pair this morning in Washington — supporting Simpson-Bowles is not considered “biased” or “partisan” according to the usual rules of traditional journalistic objectivity — but some mean hecklers interrupted them. In a worrying sign for people for whom deficit reduction via earned benefits program cuts is a moral crusade, the heckler got a lot more attention on Twitter than the new Simpson-Bowles plan did. Can they recapture the magic? Or will this be like whatever gross stunt food product KFC put out after the Double Down, a pale imitation of a genuine phenomenon, doomed to be forgotten?

S and B are doing their best to explain why we need a new, different plan. One reason is that, in their eyes, the situation has gotten so, so much worse since their last plan, that we now need more deficit reduction than we needed last time. The other reason is that the point of this plan is to be a model for a “compromise” between the current supposed GOP sequester-avoiding plan and the Obama administration’s sequester-avoiding plan, and it does this by adding tax revenue that the GOP has explicitly ruled out — but not as much as the original Simpson-Bowles plan, which had a lotta taxes — and demanding even more spending cuts than the original plan did. So the new centrist common sense bipartisan compromise is way more conservative than it was a few years ago, but still not conservative enough to win any Republican support (beyond insincere rhetorical support, I mean).

The cuts come from Medicare and Medicaid, because while the Obama administration laid out a plan to get as much deficit reduction as Simpson-Bowles originally demanded, the Obama administration did so in the wrong way, without trying to cut a bunch of money from those programs and Social Security.

As you may have heard, probably on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” the United States will eventually — in a few decades — have a big debt problem, mostly because we have committed to paying for healthcare for old people and healthcare costs are ballooning. In order to “fix the debt,” we will probably just have to pay doctors and drug companies less. (That will make a lot of doctors and drug companies mad, but the alternative is “let old people die” so they should just suck it up.) And there, I’ve solved the long-term budget deficit, let’s all go home. (Also, there is no real point to “balancing the budget,” something the United States has basically never done, except that it sounds nice to people.)

Politico is still pretty excited about Simpson and Bowles but this plan — which no one in Congress or the White House cares about, and which is so incredibly vague in its details as to be effectively meaningless — is just a waste of everyone’s time.

Simpson, Bowles propose $2.4 trillion U.S. deficit reduction

Reuters – 5 hrs ago

Reuters/Reuters - Erskine Bowles (L) and Alan Simpson (R), co-chairmen of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, take their seats to testify before the U.S. Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, November 1, 2011. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two key deficit experts on Tuesday offered an updated plan to reduce U.S. government deficit spending by $2.4 trillion over 10 years through a combination of spending cuts, a healthcare overhaul and tax reform.

The proposal came from Erskine Bowles, a Democrat who served as President Bill Clinton's chief of staff, and former Republican senator Alan Simpson, the co-chairmen of a former fiscal commission that President Barack Obama launched during his first term. It adds to the Washington debate on what to do about $1 trillion in annual deficits and a $16 trillion national debt.

The Simpson-Bowles plan, a follow-up proposal that builds on the commission's 2010 report, comes as policymakers brace for automatic budget cuts that appear increasingly likely to kick in starting on March 1.

Simpson and Bowles both doubted Congress and the White House would be able to come up with a plan to avoid the cuts, known as sequestration.

It is unclear how much impact the plan will have because it contains elements that have been non-starters for each party - further tax revenue, which has been rejected by Republicans; and even deeper cuts to entitlement programs such as Medicare, a notion rejected by Democrats.

Under the proposal, about one-fourth of the $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction would come from healthcare reforms and another fourth from tax reform.

The remaining reduction would come from a combination of mandatory spending cuts, stronger caps on U.S. discretionary spending, using the Consumer Price Index for inflation-indexed provisions in the budget and lower interest payments.

"The proposal also calls for a parallel process to make Social Security sustainably solvent and further actions to bring transportation spending and revenues in line and limit per capita cost growth in federal budgetary commitment to healthcare to about the growth rate of the economy," according to a summary of the plan.

Overall, the plan seeks to keep the nation's debt under 70 percent of gross domestic product in a decade, and to keep lowering that ratio in the years after.

It quickly earned mixed reviews. The nation's largest labor union the AFL-CIO criticized the blueprint, calling it a blow to working Americans who would see their benefits cut.

The Campaign to Fix the Debt praised the framework for addressing major issues such as entitlement programs and tax reform, although it did not specifically endorse the plan.

"Their approach has the potential to refocus the national discussion back where it should be," said Maya MacGuineas, head of the non-partisan group aimed at improving the U.S. economy.

HEALTHCARE, TAXES

The initial Simpson-Bowles plan, released in December 2010 while head of Obama's bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, failed to gain enough support in Congress, although it has become the basis for much discussion.

Their latest proposal would target $600 billion in cuts over 10 years to the nation's healthcare system under Medicare and Medicaid insurance programs for the elderly, disabled and poor.

That is more than the $400 billion the Obama administration has said it would accept.

It calls for using so-called tax expenditures to help pay down the U.S. deficit, a move opposed by Republicans who want such expenditures to be used solely to lower tax rates.

It does not get specific, however, and tax expenditures include politically popular items like the tax break for mortgage interest and charitable giving.

"We're going to have to push the White House on healthcare, we're going to have to push the Republicans on revenue," Bowles said on CNBC.

"Over the next 10 years, there's probably $13 trillion worth of tax expenditures in the tax code ... and we're talking about using about $500 billion of that to reduce deficit and the rest they can use if they want to reduce rates," Bowles said. "I think that's a pretty fair trade."

He said the extra healthcare savings are necessary and would include more cost sharing and means testing as well as paying for quality of care provided, rather then the number of doctor's visits or tests - all ideas long-touted to curb the nation's rising healthcare costs, especially among Democrats.

In a nod to Republicans, however, the plan does not include vouchers or other means of helping people pay their premiums.

Still, Bowles and Simpson said it was unlikely either Republicans or Democrats would agree on a deal until after the harsh budget cuts kick in next Friday.

"I think when this really stupid, stupid, stupid sequester goes into effect and people have to start standing in lines for three hours to get through security at the airports, they're going to visibly feel how this government has become completely dysfunctional," Bowles told CNBC. "I think they will really get angry with these people in Congress and the administration.""

Simpson, who gave leaders on both sides a C-plus grade on handling the deficit, added: "It'll be chaos."

(Reporting by Steve Holland and Susan Heavey; Additional reporting by Kim Dixon; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Bill Trott)

Memo to Congress, White House: Get serious on debt   It is critical that leaders in both parties come together in an honest and meaningful way, the authors write. | Reuters By: Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson February 14, 2013 10:19 PM EST

The continual fiscal brinkmanship of the past two years — in which policymakers go from crisis to crisis, avoiding catastrophe at the last moment and providing nothing more than usual “small ball” solutions that fail to address our underlying structural problems — has ground all progress to a halt. The failure to get our debt under control, reform our Tax Code and put our entitlement programs on a fiscally sustainable course is robbing us of the ability to invest in our future and will leave us without the resources we need to meet other challenges facing our nation. And moving forward will be out of our reach as long as we continue to “pass the buck” on the debt crisis. It is critical that leaders in both parties come together in an honest and meaningful way to put our fiscal house in order if they have any hope of addressing the other challenges and opportunities that we face as a nation. Congress could barely come to agreement on a last-minute, short-term compromise on the fiscal cliff at year’s end. All Washington has managed to do since our commission submitted its report is the easy stuff. Through a combination of the work done in the continuing resolution, the Budget Control Act and the pitiful revenue deal at year end, Washington has capped discretionary spending without being specific on what it will actually cut, and it has raised taxes on the rich. It has done nothing to reform the Tax Code or reduce the rate of growth of health care spending to no more than 1 percent above the rate of growth in the economy. Nor has it done anything to make Social Security sustainably solvent. This is the hard stuff that must be done to finally put our nation’s fiscal house in order. An agreement large enough to complete the job may seem out of reach. However, looking at where the parties were in the negotiations last year, it seems clear that it is possible to reach agreement on a plan if both sides are willing to go beyond their comfort zones and come to a principled compromise. President Barack Obama and Speaker John Boehner originally made substantial progress toward a comprehensive deficit reduction plan that could have gotten us most of the way. Importantly, these negotiations focused beyond the near-term crisis, with real discussions on structural entitlement reforms as well as comprehensive tax reforms. Both sides identified potential areas of agreement: using chained CPI to index both spending programs and the Tax Code with protections for low vulnerable populations; identifying additional savings from defense and domestic discretionary programs and unjustified subsidies; and finding savings in mandatory programs that can and should be included in a comprehensive deficit reduction plan. That last round of negotiations should be the starting point for the next round — however, both sides will have to go further. The president deserves credit for putting forward Medicare savings in his budget and offering further entitlement savings in the negotiations, but he and his fellow Democrats must be willing to do more to reform our entitlement programs. Reaching an agreement to achieve the amount of savings necessary to slow the rate of growth in health care to no more than 1 percent above the rate of growth in the economy will require a combination of Republicans and Democratic ideas for achieving savings from those programs. For health savings, we’ll have to look at everything from increasing premiums for well-off beneficiaries to reducing reimbursements to providers and drug companies to modernizing cost-sharing rules to tort reform. We will also need to reorient incentives to change the delivery of care and make adjustments to reflect the aging of society. In short, it will require taking on favored and well-entrenched constituencies across the health care system. Remember, health care is the largest single driver of our future debt. On the tax side, Republicans must be willing to acknowledge that more revenue will be needed as part of an agreement to meet our deficit-reduction goals, but those revenues need not be generated by “tax increases” but through comprehensive tax reform that broadens the base and lowers rates. The Tax Code is riddled with more than $1 trillion of annual tax breaks — most of which are just government spending in disguise. By reforming them, we can reduce individual and corporate tax rates in a way that keeps the Tax Code progressive while promoting economic growth and reducing the deficit at the same time. If both sides move as one beyond their comfort zone on health and tax reform, those changes could be combined with the other spending cuts discussed in the negotiations last December to produce a package large enough to stabilize and begin to reduce our debt as a share of the economy. Even with such a package, however, further steps would be needed to ensure long-term fiscal sustainability in light of the major demographic and health care pressures expected in the coming decades. Social Security will still need to be reformed to achieve sustainable solvency over 75 years; though these reforms could be gradual and designed to protect the most vulnerable. We will also need to continue implementing reforms of the health care system as we learn more about which policies are effective in controlling costs. We need to keep the pressure on to take further action to reduce health care spending if the policies we enact now are not sufficient to limit the growth to a sustainable level that grows no faster than GDP plus 1 percent. The events over the past few weeks have demonstrated that neither party will be able to deal with this problem on its own and that any solution will require a bipartisan agreement based on principled compromise. Our generation created this mess, and it’s our generation’s responsibility to clean it up together. We do not have the time or the luxury of leaving this problem for the next generation to solve. If America is to compete successfully in this global economy, the time for responsible action is now. One thing is certain, if our generation does not solve this problem we created, the brute force of the markets will, and that will not be a pretty sight. Erskine Bowles is a former White House chief of staff; Alan Simpson is a former Republican senator from Wyoming. They were co-chairmen of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. © 2013 POLITICO LLC

Exclusive: Disney discovers unreleased Mickey Mouse sketch from 1938

By Eric Pfeiffer, Yahoo! News | The Sideshow – 4 hrs ago

"Mickey's Toothache," from 1938 shows the famous mouse being chased by a dentist's chair and nemesis "Pete" during …

More than 80 years after his creation, Mickey Mouse continues to surprise.

The Disney archives have released a newly discovered sketch from 1938, “Mickey’s Toothache,” part of an incomplete cartoon that was part of an effort to make Mickey a more complete character.

In “Mickey’s Toothache,” created in April 1938, artist Ferdinand Horvath has the newly adventurous Mickey experiencing something akin to a psychedelic nightmare. In the words of Disney Archives Director Becky Cline, Mickey has traveled to the dentist and fallen under the influence of too much laughing gas. The overdose sends Mickey into a “nightmarish world inhabited by living teeth, dental floss, a psychotic dentist’s chair and a vengeful pair of dental pliers," said Cline.

Mickey’s then-nemesis Pete also makes an appearance in the nightmare scenario. It culminates with Mickey being put on trial led, of course, by a judgmental wisdom tooth, who charges Mickey with tooth neglect.

The previously forgotten piece of artwork was discovered in the Walt Disney Archives, hiding out in a folder lost for more than 74 years. It was unearthed just a few months ago.

“Mickey’s Toothache” is just one of several unveilings being planned as part of this year’s D23 Disney Fanniversary Celebration, an event that began last year as a way to include members of Disney’s official fan club in some of the company’s milestone events. The Horvath image will be included in a 90-minute presentation showcasing some of this year’s other major Disney anniversaries in 10 different U.S. cities (Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Newark, Orlando, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.).

“Mickey has been a superstar from almost the beginning. He was immediately popular,” Cline told Yahoo News. “By 1938, he was just about to step into a finished version of himself. He was boyish and impish. During this period of his growth he became larger than life in some ways.”

Cline says the artwork showcases the transformation of America's favorite mouse from popular fad to American icon. It's one that can be seen as well in released cartoons of Mickey engaging in various adventures in locales including the deepest jungles of Africa, or in the 1936 cartoon “Through the Mirror.”

“Mickey was kind of growing and stretching. He left the barnyard, and he started to become more adventurous,” Cline said.

Though most people think of Walt Disney himself in relation to his most-famous individual creation, Horvath was a significant part of the early Disney years. Born in 1891 Horvath spent time in a Russian concentration camp where he taught himself to draw before immigrating to America on Armistice Day 1921. He worked for the studio from 1934 through 1944, producing between 70 and 80 animated shorts along the way and working on the production of "Snow White."

Last year, we brought you the story of a newly discovered, 85-year-old Oswald the Rabbit sketch, “Harem Scarem.” Since then, Disney has pushed forward with efforts to bring Oswald, a Mickey prototype of sorts, back into the Disney fold.

So, will we ever see a complete version of “Mickey’s Toothache”?

“It’s possible,” Cline said. "The animation research library still goes back and refers to those older cartoons. ... Even though we’re still discovering some of this material for the first time in decades, they’re not lost.”