With the sequester, Obama gets his ‘balanced’ approach

Washington Post ^ | 03/05/2013 | Marc Thiessen

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Congressional Republicans have had quite a comeback. In January, the GOP was forced to vote for a major tax hike with zero spending cuts. Now it is President Obama who has been forced to accept spending cuts with no tax hike. Who says divided government doesn’t work?

Obama continues to complain the sequester does not represent a balanced approach to deficit reduction, and wants to replace some of the spending cuts with tax increases. But the Simpson-Bowles Commission laid out what a “balanced” approach should entail: $3 of spending cuts for every $1 dollar in tax increases. Well according to Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), by that standard Congress and the president have nearly met that mark.

Just a few weeks ago, as part of the fiscal-cliff deal, Congress approved $620 billion in tax hikes over ten years with no spending cuts. That means that to meet the 3-to-1 ratio, we should have a corresponding $1.86 trillion in spending cuts. But the sequester cuts just $1.72 trillion in spending over 10 years, according to Portman’s office. That is a ratio of just 2.78-to-1. We would need to cut an additional $138 billion, Portman calculates, in order to meet the 3-to-1 ratio recommended by Simpson-Bowles.

If anything, the spending cuts Congress enacted in the sequester are not too deep — they are not deep enough.

There is nothing wrong with cutting $1.72 trillion from the federal budget. The problem with the sequester is that the cuts were not targeted — hitting vital programs (like national defense) and wasteful ones with equal force. For weeks, Obama tried to use the indiscriminate nature of the sequester to bludgeon Republicans into replacing some of the cuts with new tax revenues.

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Still, keep in mind where Obama wanted to take the country. His original demand in the fiscal cliff negotiations last year was a $1.6 trillion tax paired with a $50 billion spending increase. Instead, a few months later, he got a $620 billion tax increase paired with a $1.72 trillion spending cut.

I think the days of Obama getting all he wants just might be over.

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RE: I think the days of Obama getting all he wants just might be over.

If Congress has the cojones.