The GOP’s Big Sequester Bluff
BRIAN BEUTLER JANUARY 28, 2013, 1:20 PM
The Republican Party has become awfully sanguine about the sequester. Thats not to say that theyre enthusiastic about the fact that it will cut government programs particularly defense programs across the board. But after losing back-to-back tax and spending fights over the fiscal cliff and the debt limit theyre telegraphing a willingness to let the sequester take an axe to the budget. Or at least that theyre more willing to let it hit than Democrats are.
We think these sequesters will happen because the Democrats have opposed our efforts to replace those cuts with others-and theyve offered no alternatives, said the House GOPs top budget guy, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), Sunday on NBCs Meet The Press.
Im pretty sure it is going to happen now, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-CA) told Politico. I guess the feeling is until everybody feels enough pain, were not going to do the things that we really need to do. And that scares me.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) recently told the Wall Street Journal that the sequester [is] as much leverage as were going to get.
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