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Democrats control the White House and Senate, and won more of the national vote in House races last year than Republicans, Packer observes—”And yet the dominant argument in Washington is over spending cuts, not over ways to increase economic growth and address acute problems like inequality, poor schools, and infrastructure decay.”
Obama proposals that require new spending—universal pre-K, for one—will be easier to block because those automatic cuts have to be dealt with first, according to Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard and a Fox News commentator. “The sequester is a gift that keeps on giving,” Barnes adds gleefully. “Republicans can sit on their hands and experience the joy of trimming the size of government and, thanks to the sequester, watching Democrats gripe about it.”
In the WSJ, Barnes also reminds us that when the Bush tax cuts were about to expire at the end of 2012, the White House agreed to preserve them for those with taxable incomes of less than $400,000, which are 99 percent of the nation’s taxpayers. “Now the Bush tax rates are permanent and White House leverage is gone,” Barnes writes.
