Sequester this

For several weeks we've seen horrified reports of the imminent "meat cleaver" effect of an ill-advised sequester approach to spending cuts.  Many commenters agree that spending must be cut, but cannot understand how we could be backed into the corner of a style of cuts that everyone agrees is needlessly damaging.

But this is not some kind of horrendous unintended consequence of a well-intentioned Congressional budget-control action, frozen into place by partisan bitterness.  The sequester is functioning exactly as President Obama designed it to function in 2011.  He did not propose it as a method to rein in spending.  He proposed it as a measure so painful to both parties that it would inevitably be replaced by a compromise -- and a compromise, for him, means tax hikes.  For weeks now, the Republican-controlled House has been crafting alternatives that would achieve the same spending cuts, but without affecting critical government functions.  The White House, and the Democrat-controlled Senate, refuse even to put these alternative measures to a vote.  Why?  Because Republicans, having already agreed to $600 billion in new taxes two months ago, refuse to raise taxes again.  They insist instead on measures that will turn ham-fisted spending cuts into thoughtful ones, without "balancing" this independently helpful action with tax hikes.  Their approach makes sense to me.  Both Republicans and Democrats agree that the same amount of spending could be cut, but with less damage to the country.  By what logic is a bipartisan agreement to avoid that uncontroversial harm something that taxpayers should "pay for" with a tax hike?

But making the spending cuts less harmful is something the President steadfastly refuses to consider.  His position is not as irrational as it sounds.  For him, the whole point of the sequester is leverage to induce tax hikes.  A less painful sequester is almost as useless as no sequester at all.  Nor is the problem that the proposed alternative spending cuts don't match the President's budget priorities; the House offered to give the President discretion in what to cut.  He tossed that hot potato away instantly, threatening a veto.  As his advisors said publicly, why would the President want to be associated even more personally with particular spending cuts than he already is?  Why indeed, unless he genuinely cared about making the spending cuts less painful?  He doesn't care about making them less painful.  He'd make them more painful if he could figure out a way to do it.  He certainly has been hitting the speech circuit to exaggerate their effect to the limits of his rhetorical ability.

Some of the spending cuts will hurt, and that's a shame -- but not enough of a shame to let the President use them as a threat to extract a second round of tax hikes less than two months after the first one.  His behavior is a disgrace.  It's time for "balance" in the form of spending cuts.  Having already approved a large tax hike, House Republicans have made the difficult choice in favor of bad spending cuts that are better than either no spending cuts at all, which is the art of the possible as things now stand in Washington.