If The Washington Post wanted to print an article guaranteed to maximize the chances that House Republicans would stick to their guns and allow the scheduled spending sequester to happen they could not have done any better than the front page David Fahrenthold story published yesterday. Under the header Many 2011 federal budget cuts had little real-world effect" Fahrenthold writes:
Late on the night of April 8 2011 Washingtons leaders announced that theyd just done something extraordinary. They had agreed to cut the federal budget and cut it big.
…
Today an examination of 12 of the largest cuts shows that thanks in part to these gimmicks federal agencies absorbed $23 billion in reductions without losing a single employee. … At the Census Bureau for instance officials had already said they didnt need the more than $6 billion they had spent the year before. That money had paid for the once-a-decade 2010 Census. There wasnt of course another census planned in 2011. … At the Transportation Department Congress canceled $630 million in orphan earmarks." These were the wandering ghosts of the highway budget: pots of money assigned for specific road projects which were still sitting unspent years and years later. Often this money seemed unlikely to ever be spent. Many projects had been canceled. In one case the funds were earmarked for a road that did not even exist.
Later in the article Club for Growth President Chris Chocola explained the effect these phantom cuts are having on the current sequester debate: There has been a shift in resolve. They have been burned in these fictional cuts. And so the sequester is like real cuts. So I think that there is a willingness to say Weve really got to cut stuff and the cuts have got to be real."
The sense of betrayal Chocolo describes among many then-freshman Republican congressmen is very real. They feel they were tricked by establishment Washington into voting for fake spending cuts back in 2011 and now they want to make those cuts real in 2013. Democratic plans to replace these very real cuts with tax hikes are completely out of the question and kicking the can down the road by back-loading the cuts is now also suspect.
If the sequester is undone it will have to be done with Democratic votes in the House. And the only way that happens is if at least part of the cuts are replaced with tax hikes. That isnt happening either. Which is why the sequester is almost certainly going to happen on schedule.
If The Washington Post wanted to print an article guaranteed to maximize the chances that House Republicans would stick to their guns and allow the scheduled spending sequester to happen they could not have done any better than the front page David Fahrenthold story published yesterday. Under the header Many 2011 federal budget cuts had little real-world effect" Fahrenthold writes:
Late on the night of April 8 2011 Washingtons leaders announced that theyd just done something extraordinary. They had agreed to cut the federal budget and cut it big.
…
Today an examination of 12 of the largest cuts shows that thanks in part to these gimmicks federal agencies absorbed $23 billion in reductions without losing a single employee. … At the Census Bureau for instance officials had already said they didnt need the more than $6 billion they had spent the year before. That money had paid for the once-a-decade 2010 Census. There wasnt of course another census planned in 2011. … At the Transportation Department Congress canceled $630 million in orphan earmarks." These were the wandering ghosts of the highway budget: pots of money assigned for specific road projects which were still sitting unspent years and years later. Often this money seemed unlikely to ever be spent. Many projects had been canceled. In one case the funds were earmarked for a road that did not even exist.
Later in the article Club for Growth President Chris Chocola explained the effect these phantom cuts are having on the current sequester debate: There has been a shift in resolve. They have been burned in these fictional cuts. And so the sequester is like real cuts. So I think that there is a willingness to say Weve really got to cut stuff and the cuts have got to be real."
The sense of betrayal Chocolo describes among many then-freshman Republican congressmen is very real. They feel they were tricked by establishment Washington into voting for fake spending cuts back in 2011 and now they want to make those cuts real in 2013. Democratic plans to replace these very real cuts with tax hikes are completely out of the question and kicking the can down the road by back-loading the cuts is now also suspect.
If the sequester is undone it will have to be done with Democratic votes in the House. And the only way that happens is if at least part of the cuts are replaced with tax hikes. That isnt happening either. Which is why the sequester is almost certainly going to happen on schedule.
