It’s interesting to watch the Republicans squirm as they are faced with the stiff defense-spending cuts mandated under the 2011 debt limit law if the Super Committee failed (as it did) to do its job. I’m not happy with Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin after he included dreadful detainee language in the Defense Appropriations Bill. But I like what he’s doing here:
“The purpose of the sequester is to force us to act to avoid the sequester,” Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor roundtable. “It’s like a nuclear weapon — it’s totally useless; it can’t be used except to accomplish some other goal than its use. It’s used to deter.”
…“The sequester…is used to force us to deal with the deficit. And it will. I predict it’s going to succeed,” Levin said. “But it will only succeed if it’s kept intact. That sword of Damocles can not be splintered. It’s got to be kept intact if it’s going to have its effect of basically forcing the Republicans, who have taken an ideologically rigid step against any new revenues, to relent and reflect what public opinion clearly is — that there is room for additional revenues, particularly in closing the loopholes [and] in restoring that higher rate for upper bracket Americans.”
…
“The dam has got to be broken on revenues and what will break it, I believe, is sequestration,” Levin said. “And it can’t be divided and splintered up. It’s got to be kept intact. And that’s what I believe will move the rigid ideologues to deal finally with revenue.”
In other words, “give up on the Grover Norquist bullshit or the Pentagon gets it.”
The best part, for me, is that i don’t care if the Pentagon “gets it.” I don’t care if the Medicare providers “get it.” It’s win-win.
