Sequestration Worry Warts Hope to Plug Self-Inflicted Damage

    

	Democrats	Republicans
Senate members	Patty Murray, Washington, Co-Chair Max Baucus, Montana John Kerry, Massachusetts	Jon Kyl, Arizona Rob Portman, Ohio Pat Toomey, Pennsylvania
House members	Xavier Becerra, California Jim Clyburn, South Carolina Chris Van Hollen, Maryland	Jeb Hensarling, Texas, Co-Chair Fred Upton, Michigan Dave Camp, Michigan

The Super-Committee Members
(invoked the sequestration mandate)

The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, colloquially referred to as the Super-committee, was a joint select committee of the United States Congress, created by the Budget Control Act of 2011 on August 2, 2011.

It was intended to prevent the sovereign default that could have resulted from the 2011 United States debt-ceiling crisis. The objective of the committee was to develop a deficit reduction plan over 10 years in addition to the $917 billion of cuts and initial debt limit increase of $900 billion in the Budget Control Act of 2011 that avoided a U.S. sovereign default.

The committee recommendation was to have been subject to a simple vote by the full legislative bodies without amendment; this extraordinary provision was included to limit partisan gridlock.

The goal outlined in the Budget Control Act of 2011 was to cut at least $1.5 trillion over the coming 10 years, (avoiding much larger “sequestration" across-the-board automatic cuts which would be equal to the debt ceiling increase of $1.2 trillion incurred by Congress through a failure to produce a deficit reduction bill), therefore, bypassing Congressional debate and resulting in a passed bill by December 23, 2011. 

On November 21, 2011, the committee concluded its work. They issued a joint statement that began with the following: “After months of hard work and intense deliberations, we have come to the conclusion today that it will not be possible to make any bipartisan agreement available to the public before the committee’s deadline.”

The committee was formally terminated on January 31, 2012, and here we are today facing full sequestration. Again, those automatic budget cuts to defense and discretionary spending.

A quick review tells us that any such cuts were designed to be as clumsy and inflexible as possible, in order to motivate lawmakers to come up with a better approach (which they could not back in 2011 during normal budget negotiations) – hence this pressure to make them agree.

Now that is why all agency heads have very little discretion (if any) say so about which programs are would be hit by the automatic cuts since they were designed to inflict maximum suffering on both parties' priorities with very little wiggle room to mitigate the pain, e.g., Republicans would be motivated to compromise to keep defense spending from being axed, and Democrats would come to the table to protect domestic programs.

Today, Republicans are focused on pinning the sequestration blame squarely on President Obama (who they said came up with the idea). He in turn can point Congress (and Speaker Boehner who had agreed to it along with Mr. Obama) as the culprits.

The House voted for it on an overwhelming, bipartisan basis. They agreed to it – the sequestration – but actually none of them wanted it to happen.

So, in classic Washington fashion and doublespeak as it were, they all thought they could assign the hard work to somebody else and get them to do it (the super-committee). Boy, have they all been terribly wrong.

In summary, the super-committee was supposed to forge a deal that President Obama and Speaker Boehner could not reach in their July 2011 debt-ceiling talks.

Thus it was this hypothetical future deficit reduction that got Republicans, grudgingly, to agree to raise the debt limit. And, now here we are in a shit sandwich and only one way out: repeal the sequestration now and stop the bleeding, especially with the military about to get a really huge axe – and the timing could not at a worse time.

Funny in a sick ironic sort of way that the old WWI slogan: “Loose lips sink ships” comes into focus making me wonder if our enemies are taking notes. They probably are and enjoying every moment of it. And, that conjures up an image of Jaws ... an enemy on the move towards us that will depend on how we fast we react to any needed manpower and war funding against them: