Coming Sequestration

Mr Jeffrey Zients is acting director of the Office of Management and Budget.  That means he is the President's man.  He works for President Barak Obama—directly.

Mr Zients has an article today (12:04 this AM) in Politico calling for action on the upcoming mammoth sequestration.

Congress has now begun to focus on the automatic reductions in spending — or sequester — due to take effect in January because the legislators did not achieve the deficit-reduction goal they set for themselves in the 2011 bipartisan Budget Control Act.

This is good news.  If you are driving toward a brick wall, you should do what you can to change course. Unfortunately, Congress is focusing on how much hitting the wall would hurt — not on how to avoid it in the first place.

Specifically, members of Congress are now asking the Office of Management and Budget for a range of reports on the likely effects of the sequester.  Meanwhile, OMB is beginning the internal analysis needed to implement the sequester, if Congress doesn’t take action to avoid it.  But make no mistake:  When bipartisan majorities in Congress voted for the BCA, they and the administration knew that this sequester would be destructive.

That is by design.  As President Barack Obama has said many times, the sequester wasn’t meant to be implemented.  It was designed to cause cuts so deep that just threatening them would force members of Congress to agree on a big, balanced package of deficit reduction.

There is the news.

Regards  —  Cliff