Learning to Love Sequestration

[Geee]

American Spectator:

Paul Ryan says it’s going to happen, the sequestration, that is. One can hardly imagine any alternative scenario, in which Democrats and Republicans work it all out, and come out singing Kumbaya with a deal to avert the workings of the automatic cuts, share and share alike, to domestic and defense discretionary spending.

Certainly, it would be better a) to prioritize cuts, and to reform entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security over a longer time line. The former is just common sense. The latter would reduce any short-term hit on the economy while improving the long-run balance sheet of the nation and head off cascading and uncontrolled spending and inevitable tax increases caused by changing demographics, i.e., low birth rates and an ageing population, and the fact that the entitlements are on auto-pilot and not subject to negotiations or restraint in the normal budgetary process in Congress.

But no Democrat is willing to jump on entitlements. No Republican wants to jump, say, on farm subsidies or defense spending. Let the grandchildren be damned.

[Draggingtree]

Sequestration no longer the 'bad policy' bogeyman for Congress

 

By Jeremy Herb - 01/29/13 05:00 AM ET

The defense industry has now stared down the prospect of across-the-board spending cuts under sequestration for nearly 18 months — and they look more likely now than ever as the March 1 deadline approaches for the automatic cuts to occur.

 

When the prospect of $1 trillion in across-the-board cuts to both defense and non-defense spending was included in the 2011 Budget Control Act, leaders in Washington said the cuts would never happen — the across-the-board reductions were “bad policy” to be used as a “forcing mechanism.”

But lawmakers have increasingly become open to the prospect that the cuts will, in fact, occur

 

http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/budget-appropriations/279743-sequestration-no-longer-the-bad-policy-bogeyman-for-congress