Irreconcilable Budget Differences

[Geee]

American Spectator:

This week you're likely to hear a lot more about the death of one of the Beastie Boys and the French election than what Republicans are trying to do to save the Pentagon budget from the wrecking ball of sequestration. The reasons you won't hear about it are lessons for Mitt Romney, who remains oddly disconnected from what House Republicans are doing.

That's the first problem. Romney, the presumptive nominee, is rapidly earning the reputation attributed to the Palestinians almost forty years ago by Israeli Prime Minister Abba Eban: he never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Romney could be working closely with House leaders to pass legislation -- putting Senate Dems under the gun for killing the bills - to illustrate vividly how a Romney presidency would help save the nation from Obama's spending spree, reductions in military strength and over-regulation. But he isn't.

One of the biggest problems that will come to a head soon after the election is the result of last year's disastrous debt ceiling deal, which imposed about $600 billion in defense cuts (on top of the $400 billion Obama already made) over the next ten years. As I wrote here three weeks ago, sequestration imposes limits on future spending across the board, a decision made in perfect ignorance of whether we'd be cutting fat or muscle.

Moreover, sequestration spending cuts will result in the Pentagon breaching its contracts for major weapon systems. These breaches will end up costing as much (or more) to terminate the contracts as it would to actually buy the weapon systems for which the contracts were signed. And sequestration will cost a massive number of high-tech private sector jobs. (According to one study by Dr. Stephen Fuller of George Mason University, the sequestration cuts would cost almost 600,000 jobs and $35 billion in lost earnings in 2013 alone.)

Congressional sources tell me that Democrats are getting nervous about defense sequestration. But with Obama's continued threat to veto any bill that fixes the mess, they're not nervous enough yet to do anything to stop the coming train wreck. Fortunately, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Ca) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Ca) are stepping up to prevent it.

At four syllables, sequestration is too long a word to use in politics. The fix for sequestration McKeon and McCarthy have chosen is budget reconciliation (two words, eight syllables, beyond the attention span of 98% of the media). Nevertheless, it's a good idea that deserves our support.