Sequestration and the Centrists

So it's looking like there won't be a deal to avert sequestration by March 1, though this is always subject to change, as the nature of "chicken" type negotiation is to wait until the last second to make concessions.  Still, in comparison to the Fiscal Cliff and Debt Ceiling standoffs, we're not hearing the same kinds of forecasts of Doom if sequestration happens, so the stakes don't seem as high.

And the prospects for compromise just don't look very good.  The Republican party continues its absolutist No New Taxes stance.  So all their offers are just to replace the cuts to defense and discretionary spending with..... even more cuts to discretionary spending and less to defense.  For liberals, these offers are worse than the sequester itself.  And of course Democrats' offers are all based on more revenue one way or another, and Republicans see that as worse than the sequester too.

Now in the past when the parties have been caught with no compromise to be made, the circle is squared by just increasing the deficit.  But now we have lots of people in the political center and on the right who would go bonkers if we did that, so it's not an option.  So we're left with the sequester ready to kick in.

Jonathan Chait has a wonderful framing of the problems in the political center, based on an awful David Brooks NYT column from last week. Brooks in his column blames both parties for the failure to reach a deal, and accuses the President of refusing to make a serious proposal, even though he has done so numerous times.  Ezra Klein follows up with an interview with Brooks in which he takes him down beautifully:

EK: On that point, one theme in your column, and in a lot of columns these days, is this idea that the president should, on the one hand, be putting forward centrist policies, and on the other hand, that if he’s putting forward policies that the Republican Party won’t agree to, those policies don’t count, as they’re nothing more than political ploys. But while I agree that some level of political realism should enter into any White House’s calculations, it seems a bit dangerous and strange to say the boundaries of the discussion should be set by the agenda that lost the last election.

 

DB: In my ideal world, the Obama administration would do something Clintonesque: They’d govern from the center; they’d have a budget policy that looked a lot more like what Robert Rubin would describe, and if the Republicans rejected that, moderates like me would say that’s awful, the White House really did come out with a centrist plan.

EK: But I’ve read Robert Rubin’s tax plan. He wants $1.8 trillion in new revenues. The White House, these days, is down to $1.2 trillion. I’m with Rubin on this one, but given our two political parties, the White House’s offer seems more centrist. And you see this a lot. People say the White House should do something centrist like Simpson-Bowles, even though their plan has less in tax hikes and less in defense cuts. So it often seems like a no-win for them.
 

He's polite to Brooks.  Many are more blunt: Brooks and other centrists keep complaining that somenone just needs to lead with a serious mix of revenue increases and entitlement cuts, but nobody will do this.  Meanwhile, President Obama keeps proposing exactly what the Centrists are begging for, and Republicans are turning him down. So why are "both sides" getting blamed?  Brooks, to his credit, actually publishes a postscript to his original column, something I've never seen in the NYT for a regular column (you see it plenty in blog posts, but not in op-eds):

The above column was written in a mood of justified frustration over the fiscal idiocy that is about to envelop the nation. But in at least one respect I let my frustration get the better of me. It is true, as the director of the Congressional Budget Office has testified, that the administration has not proposed a specific anti-sequester proposal that can be scored or passed into law. It is not fair to suggest, as I did, that tax hikes for the rich is the sole content of the president’s approach. The White House has proposed various constructive changes to spending levels and entitlement programs. These changes are not nearly adequate in my view, but they do exist, and I should have acknowledged the balanced and tough-minded elements in the president’s approach.

Weak tea, not an admissiont that the whole premise of the column is bogus, but I guess it's something.  Matt Yglesias has a good post on what he calls "BipartisanThink" too, if you want more of this.  Centrists are just so bought in to the "both sides need to come together" narrative, that they can't change their frame and see what's right in front of their faces: the real problem in US politics is that the Republican party has become extremely radical and rejects all compromise.  It's a very partisan statement, but it's true.

One more thing from Ezra Klein on this here.