It was originally touted as the worst thing that could possibly happen. Okay, the second worst. Yet, the failure to meet the self-imposed Congressional deadline for tweaking the budget came and went last week with relatively little drama. That was surprising after the dire predictions made by members of Congress and the President which sounded suspiciously like the terrible warnings that they made after they couldn’t manage to remedy the debt ceiling mess.
But, of course, that’s Congress for you. They’ve been treating spending cuts like a bad diet: dreaming up consequences and then deciding that it’s not really so bad. It’s the whole, “I must lose five pounds by Thanksgiving” but then reaching for another pumpkin cupcake after dinner because they figure they can work it off later. Only with Congress, later never actually comes.
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) who managed to put forth a sensible revenue alternative last week has apparently fallen off the fiscal responsibility wagon. He’s joined the “let’s do it tomorrow” crew by recommending that the automatic spending cuts not be so automatic. Of course, we knew that was coming. I just didn’t see Toomey leading the charge.
Toomey, a member of the “Super Committee” (which really, really needs another name now), didn’t support the law which made $1.2 trillion in cuts automatic if the budget wasn’t remedied. The law passed anyway. Taxpayers breathed a sigh of relief at the time because we had a solution. But it was a fake solution, of course, because some members of Congress (apparently Toomey included) never took the deadline seriously.
The real problem? The automatic cuts don’t make everyone happy.
I know, you’re thinking that’s the whole point of the Super Committee in the first place… to work out which cuts actually needed to happen so that we didn’t have to rely on the automatic cuts. But that would be the sensible answer. The real answer was that the Super Committee was apparently a vehicle for foot stomping so that later, members of Congress could argue that they didn’t get their way.
Toomey is now arguing that the automatic cuts will undermine the military. Maybe that’s a fair statement. But why argue it now? Why not have cut a deal – when he had the chance – to save military programs if that’s what he felt was important?
I don’t want to hear that it was impossible. It wasn’t impossible. For more than 200 years, our country has managed to pay the military and keep the lights on. Why this Congress can’t make this happen is mind-boggling.
Of course, the cuts won’t take effect until 2013 which means that for all of the histrionics, Congress has plenty of time to keep passing the blame and making dire threats. In the meantime, President Obama has threatened to veto an attempt to circumvent the automatic cuts which should make for an interesting 2012.
