Yup: Cutting spending means … you have to cut spending

[babylonsister]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/04/22/yup-cutting-spending-means-you-have-to-cut-spending/

Yup: Cutting spending means … you have to cut spending

Posted by Jonathan Bernstein on April 22, 2013 at 4:37 pm


The Republican strategy on sequestration has been clear for months now: sequestration is terrific because spending cuts are good…and every specific program cut by sequestration is a terrible injustice that Barack Obama should have avoided.

snip//

Be careful — you’re going to hear people blaming “both sides” for these cuts, but that’s absolutely wrong. For example, James Joyner notes that Obama resisted a measure which would have given him more flexibility to choose which cuts to hit, and claims:

The result is this kind of nonsense: Deep and stupid cuts to areas of the budget where we all agree that spending makes sense. Not even the most die-hard Tea Partyer wants to do away with air traffic control. And, yet, here we are.

But that’s really wrong. It may be true that no one specifically wants to shut down air traffic control, or the FBI, or food inspections, or the military…but once you start really looking at that list, what you find is that the level of cuts involved mean that something that “nobody” wants to cut will in fact have to be cut.

snip//

So Obama’s refusal to accept GOP demands that he accept ”flexible” sequestration, giving the administration some latitude over cuts, wasn’t so much about a Washington Monument strategy (making sure that spending cuts were noticeable) as it was about not wanting to take on the responsibility for choosing specific cuts in a political climate that promised that any specific cut — no matter what — would bring solid Republican criticism that it was the wrong cut.

The real story here is simple: if you want massive spending cuts, that means massive cuts to government programs that people like. And one political party has been advocating those cuts, and even risking default of the government in order to get them. No matter what Republicans say now about the effects of those cuts.

[blkmusclmachine]

1. DEMs will get plastered providing cover for GOPs wet dream legislation they wouldnt stand up against

Win-win for the GOP.

Change. A noun, not a verb.

[lunatica]

2. OK. My brain has officially exploded

How the GOP manages to make itself out to be the victims while perpetrating the crimes is mind boggling. Their logic? If President Obama were a good President he would stop us.

[CTyankee]

3. I like it the way the press and others are being inconvenienced and they want an air traffic

controller carve-out, because they don't want to be delayed on the Bos-Wash corridor flights.

Oh, these precious little babies! What about the laid off teachers and other workers? What about carve-outs for THEIR jobs?

I get it about air traffic safety, but this ain't about that. It's about the chattering class being forced to wait out long delays and feeling like they are not so special after all...