Republicans should do more than just prepare legislation providing “flexibility” to the executive branch to administer these tiny budget cuts. They should prepare detailed budget cuts of their own department-by-department, providing exact line items of what programs can be cut or delayed under a sequester in the Dept. of Transportation, for example, so that it is not necessary to cut back on air traffic controllers in the towers, or food safety inspectors at USDA. They should announce these on a daily basis, as well as highlighting just one wasteful program in each department every day. The Pentagon should not be exempt from this, either. I’m sure the Pentagon can delay sexual harassment training programs for a few months, or can tell some colonels to drive their own cars to base instead of having a personal driver.
Hayward's colleague Paul Mirengoff takes this strategy one step further:
When the public begins to feel the bite of the sequester, House Republicans should haul the relevant cabinet members and agency heads before the applicable Committee. Because the money available to the department or agency in question even after the sequester will exceed that available to them not long ago, the official in question should explain why services provided not long ago cannot be provided now.
The agency head presumably will say that the cuts are too indiscriminate. The question should then be whether the agency could provide better service if it had discretion to administer the cuts as it sees fit.
If the House has passed legislation granting that discretion, the agency head will be in a box. To agree that the added discretion would help is to admit that the Senate Democrats and President Obama should have supported the Republican legislation. To deny that the added discretion would help is to (1) admit to a low level of administrative skill and (2) contradict the earlier admission that the agency isn’t running properly because, at least in part, the cuts are too indiscriminate.
Ultimately, the supposedly draconian sequester will not really accomplish all that much anyway. From George Will, mocking the hysterical tone of Democrats who think the sequester will end life as we know it:
As in: Batten down the hatches — the sequester will cut $85 billion from this year’s $3.6 trillion budget! Or: Head for the storm cellar — spending will be cut 2.3 percent! Or: Washington chain-saw massacre — we must scrape by on 97.7 percent of current spending! Or: Chaos is coming because the sequester will cut a sum $25 billion larger than was justshoveled out the door (supposedly, but not actually) for victims of Hurricane Sandy! Or: Heaven forfend, the sequester will cut 47 percent as much as was spent on the AIG bailout! Or: Famine, pestilence and locusts will come when the sequester causes federal spending over 10 years to plummet from $46 trillion all the way down to $44.8 trillion! Or: Grass will grow in the streets of America’s cities if the domestic agencies whose budgets have increased 17 percent under President Obama must endure a 5 percent cut!
Will goes on later to suggest that the sequester really isn't even that good of an idea (the arbitrary nature of the cuts themselves, which is the reason Republicans need to step in and use the strategies stated above), and I agree. If this is what happens when cuts are at all brought up in Washington then we have a long way to go to come up with anything that will alter our current course.
No comments:
Post a Comment