Steve Benen makes an observation:
According to GOP leaders, policymakers need to replace the $1.2 trillion in automatic sequestration cuts with some other, comparable cuts, and need to come up with $1.5 trillion in cuts in order to raise the debt limit. Both will have to happen at around the same time, no later than the end of February, and be independent of the $1 trillion in cuts Obama already accepted during the last debt-ceiling fight in 2011.
In other words, according to public comments from McConnell and Boehner, Republicans seriously believe President Obama must accept $2.7 trillion in cuts — without raising taxes at all — within the next two months. And if not, there will be an enormous crisis.
And what is it, exactly, that GOP leaders expect to cut by $2.7 trillion? Oddly enough, they haven’t said, but (a) Republicans apparently anticipate deep cuts to social insurance programs like Medicare and Social Security; and (b) Democrats are supposed to help Republicans come up with the list of cuts.
This won’t end well.
Probably the only reason that Speaker Boehner still has his job is that no one else wants it. The president has no intention of even answering the phone when Boehner calls about the debt ceiling. As for sequestration, the president doesn’t have to sign anything he doesn’t want to sign, and he won’t. The Republicans are asking for nearly $3 trillion in cuts. Let them put that in a House bill and try to pass it. It should be very amusing to watch them try.
