The Sequester Monster’s Horsefeathers

The Sequester Monster has been let out of its cage ... IT is on the loose!

What mischief might it do first? How afraid of tomorrow's Sequester Monster front page story should we be? What does it eat?

So far this crisis hasn’t had the suspense of the Debt Ceiling showdown in 2011. Maybe it's going to be a bigger deal than 2012’s Fiscal Cliff brouhaha was.

Maybe.

While the cable news channels work the monster’s story for all it’s worth, we can only guess at what history will think of 2013’s new version of the same old inside-the-beltway tug-of-war game about spending priorities. What's new here? Elephants like to spend on the military and adventures overseas; they like to subsidize big business. Donkeys like to spend on social programs and infrastructure; they'd rather subsidize a safety net.

For what it's worth, so far, Wall Street doesn’t seem all that scared of the monster's potential.

Will this new gimmick eventually be called a tipping point, a time that changed the direction of American politics? Or, will it soon be seen as another fizzler of a stunt, one that barely mattered outside the beltway?

Ten years from now, will it be called something other than the Sequester?

That seems likely.

The Sequester was spawned by the Budget Control Act of 2011, which made a law out of the compromise that ended the Debt Ceiling crisis of that year’s summer. That was the crisis that threatened to have Uncle Sam telling his creditors to be patient waiting for his overdue payments. Anyway, no matter who might be said to have originally thought up the concept of the Sequester, it was Congress that breathed life into the monster -- a rough beast slouching its way toward Easter.

Yes, both major political parties signed onto the trip we’re on with this business. It was the utter failure of Congress’ own handpicked Super Committee that set the doomsday machine's clock to ticking.

Which means to blame the White House for putting Congress on the horns of this dilemma doesn't jibe with the truth. Republicans pretending the Obama administration created the monster and set it loose know better.

Obviously, the Republican leadership in Congress has decided that it wants to keep moving from one crisis to the next for a while, perhaps through the mid-term elections. No doubt, the authors of this risky strategy have had this plan focus-grouped. Which means they think they know how the voters, or at least Republican-leaning voters, will react once the effects of slashed budgets become increasingly apparent.

One reason it’s a risky strategy is that it’s mostly just a strategy. There’s no coherent philosophy behind it; there’s no wizard behind the curtain. After all, the tax loopholes that Republican spokespersons are saying they will not allow to be closed -- not under any circumstances! -- are some of the same loopholes they wanted to consider closing last year, when the crisis du jour was that Fiscal Cliff thingy.

By the way, there’s yet another debt ceiling brinkmanship joust looming on the springtime horizon ... and so it goes.

What, pray tell, does IT eat?

Maybe 10 years from now these recent propaganda battles over money and the proper role of government will be called The Horsefeathers Avalanche.

Meanwhile, standby for the inevitable accusations from Tea Party’s propagandists, claiming the socialists in the Obama administration are gaming the effects of the sequester-driven cuts. They will say the suffering is being targeted to rough up and outrage middle class voters. That, heavens-to-Betsy, while the federal government continues to redistribute your tax dollars to the purses of welfare queens driving solid gold Cadillacs.

What the GOP brain trust may have taken away from those focus groups was that if Republicans can’t come coalesce as party in 2013 to offer up some warmed-over conservative-minded solutions for real problems -- like, right now who wants to talk about problems with guns? -- then the best thing to do would be to create some new problems, irritations Republicans can seem to have a hand in soothing.

In theory, such a strategy might hamstring Democratic efforts to get public support for their warmed-over liberal solutions to problems such as health care costs, a crumbling infrastructure and climate change. For sure, the ax-wielding Sequester Monster has already made one somewhat liberal opinion writer become a shameless mixer of metaphors.

As far as any fresh ideas go, with sequels to The Horsefeathers Avalanche already on the drawing board, who’s got the time to consider anything new?

And, so it goes...

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