When it comes to the Republicans and the looming sequester, Greg Sargent correctly observes:
The reflexive ideological opposition to cutting defense (which Republicans have long equated with weakness) is running headlong into the reflexive ideological insistence on shrinking government.
This isn’t a surprise. As far back as last summer, Rep. Buck McKeon, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, started to panic about the military cuts in the sequester. He wrote pieces in the Washington Post and Politico warning against the disastrous implications of such cuts for our national security.
If the United States faced an external enemy who threatened to do this kind of damage to our national security, the president would have the primary obligation to resolve it. To avert these cuts is to intimidate our enemies, reassure our allies and keep faith with those who have sacrificed so much for so long. The commander in chief must act.
The pro-military (versus the pro-Norquist) Republicans like to blame the president for inaction, but everyone knows it’s the hardliners’ refusal to compromise that is the problem. In other words, in Buck McKeon’s own terms the Republicans are doing real damage to our national security. It’s a point that Lindsey Graham made this morning in a press conference he gave with McKeon and Sens. John McCain and Kelly Ayotte.
Graham said that McKeon would be holding hearings on the sequester’s impact, and then added, in a barb directed at Republicans: “After this hearing, if you feel comfortable cutting the government this way, then you have lost your way as much as the president.” Graham indignantly noted that Ronald Reagan had said government’s number one responsibility is to fund defense, and concluded: “I intend to fight for the party of Ronald Reagan.”
Graham added, in his typical way, “I’m sure Iran is very supportive of sequestration. I’m sure Al Qaeda training camps all over the world would be pleased with the fact that sequestration will gut the CIA.””
The administration has offered to replace the sequester with a balanced approach that will include new revenues from tax reform. The Republicans want any revenues from tax reform (closing loopholes) to go into lower rates, effectively taking money away from rich people and giving it right back to them. But if this is a game of chicken, Graham and his colleagues are swerving away from the president’s Sherman tank. They are the canary in the coal mine telling you that the GOP is going to cave.
There’s simply no sign of any crack in the resolve on the Democrats’ side to demand a balanced deal.
Good news, if it holds.
It is nice to see the NeoConfederates on the run for a change, and it is a fate well and truly deserved.
I’m just so tired of them all and their trifling ways – I just want to see them ground into dust. I want to see the day when someone would rather shave themselves with a rusted cheese grater than identify themselves as “Republican” or “conservative.”
I certainly understand your sentiment.
Oh watch the GOP governors like Jindal, Perry, and the vaginal probe of VA when the military starts laying off civilian workers. Those military bases are part of their balanced budgets. I can’t wait for some laid off white civilian worker of Fort Hood submit to a drug test for his unemployment benefits.
They will blame it on Obama, you know. “Obama took your job to fund Obamcare.” Yes, I know it’s a lie. When did that ever stop them?
Heh, indeedy:
I really don’t know how I want this to turn out.
I loves me some defense cuts. I’m quite certain we could adequately intimidate our enemies on a mere $500 billion a year, and I’m not confident that cuts the size of those in the sequester are going to happen any other way.
At the same time, we certainly don’t need a big, immediate drop in federal spending right now.
We give back in defense spending what they give back in revenues. Make them cry uncle.
To really make them cry uncle: we give back in spending (half defense, half domestic) what they give back in revenues.
Perhaps the best solution would be to transfer a couple hundred billion dollars each year from defense to something else that might enhance our national security without paying for more weaponry we don’t really need? Things like modern school houses that are equipped to utilize all the new technology spawned in the last quarter century? Or fix some of our transportation infrastructure – roads, bridges, railroads?
Spending would remain at current levels, and we’d be spending our appropriations on stuff that would actually enhance life in these here United States of America, and in turn create a job or two.
Naaaaaahhh!
Yeah, but you just know that if they cut defense spending, they’d keep all eleven carrier battle groups, but lengthen the shifts of everyone serving on the ships so they can reduce personnel costs.
We don’t need a drop; but defense is one of the least effective forms of federal spending for stimulus, with a multiplier well below one even now. While taxes also have a multiplier below one, I’m not sure that raising taxes to reduce defense spending cuts would have any benefit for the economy. Given the deficit obsession of the rightists, I don’t think we can avoid the deficit reduction; and given that we’ve probably got to have deficit reduction, defense spending cuts are probably the least destructive way to do it, possibly even more so than tax increases.
(That said, I’d be very open to short-term changes to make the cuts more rational – close specific programs while leaving others untouched, and providing funding for a few month to allow sensible mothballing and shutdowns.)
but defense is one of the least effective forms of federal spending for stimulus
The problem is, the sequester cuts are half defense and half discretionary domestic.
Yeah, but the Republicans will fight tooth and nail against reducing the domestic spending cuts. All I’ve heard is that the defense cuts might be reduced.
The President is obligated to save the Republican Party from itself? HAHAHAHAHAHA
Actually, the Commander-in-Chief is acting, just not in the way the GOP would prefer. Squeal, little piggies, squeal.
Gosh, I’m shocked the republicans are desperate to fold. They talked so tough after folding on taxes than folding on the debt ceiling. Maybe the republicans should just take a timeout from government while they get their affairs in order.
“The reflexive ideological opposition to cutting defense (which Republicans have long equated with weakness) is running headlong into the reflexive ideological insistence on shrinking government.”
This paradox, or better put, hypocrisy, has always been there. It’s just that the Democrats are finally in a position to play it — like a violin. There’s another aspect too. It’s obvious that the Tea Partiers will automatically oppose ANYTHING the president says he wants. If I were president, I think I could figure out how to work with that, and I believe Pres. Obama is at least as good a strategist as I am (chuckles).
All of this has the effect of playing the GOP off against itself. It’s cosmic political judo at its finest.