Sequestration A Fact of Life?

For John, BLUF:  Sequestration may be around for a while.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

Ezra Klein, over at The Washington Post has this column, "The Democrats have lost on sequestration".  In sum:

It is worth noting how different the Democrats’ approach to sequestration has been to the GOP’s approach to, well, everything.  Over the past five years, Republicans have repeatedly accepted short-term political pain to win the leverage necessary for long-term policy gain.  That’s the governing political principle behind their threats to shut down the government, breach the debt ceiling, and, for that matter, accept sequestration.  Today, Democrats showed they’re not willing to accept even a bit of short-term pain for leverage on sequestration.  They played a game of chicken with the Republicans, and they lost.  Badly.

At this point, it probably makes sense for the White House to push for and accept an expanded version of the Inhofe-Toomey bill giving them some discretion over how the cuts are distributed.  So far, they’ve resisted bills giving them the ability to choose, within sequestration’s broad parameters, how to allocate the cuts.  But that refusal was based on the theory that making sequestration less painful would make it more permanent.  If sequestration is permanent, however, they might as well make it a bit less painful.

Regards  —  Cliff