Lift the Veil on the Spending Cuts

Published: June 24, 2012 

The Pentagon’s powerful Republican friends in Congress are griping about a required $500 billion cut to the military budget over nine years beginning in January. It would “hollow our military,” said Speaker John Boehner. It’s a “national disgrace,” said Representative Howard McKeon, chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

• Pentagon Gets Attention, but Planned Spending Cuts Range Far and Wide (June 22, 2012)

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The critics are right that taking an across-the-board cleaver to the Pentagon is bad policy, but that is because across-the-board cuts in general are bad policy. They never seem to mention that the cuts are matched by an equally devastating slash at domestic spending — $500 billion from education, law enforcement, environmental protection, and health and safety programs, among hundreds of others. Both are part of a $1.2 trillion sequester required by the law that ended last year’s debt-ceiling fight.

Democrats seem to be the only ones who care about the domestic side of the cuts, and now they are finally starting to counter the Republican insistence — fueled by heavy pressure and big campaign donations from military contractors — that the defense cuts are the only damaging aspect of the sequester.

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who has been worked up about the Pentagon cuts, recently proposed legislation requiring a detailed accounting of which military programs would be affected, and the impact on national security. Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, proposed a countermeasure that would require an accounting of the entire sequester. The two measures were combined and passed by the Senate on Thursday as an amendment to the farm bill.

Ms. Murray’s amendment asks all the right questions of the White House budget office: What precise programs will be cut? How many jobs will be lost? What will be the effect on students of education cuts, as well as the impact of reductions on middle-class families, public safety and economic growth? (Mr. McCain asked similar questions about the defense cuts.) These matters were never discussed when the sequester was first imposed after the irresponsible threat by Republicans to send the government into default if spending wasn’t reduced.

At the moment, even lawmakers know only the broad categories of spending that will be affected, not the precise details. In testimony earlier this year, several cabinet secretaries mentioned a few of the specifics — at least 26,000 teachers would be laid off, nearly a million women and children would lose nutrition benefits, 300 national parks fully or partially closed, and large reductions made in food safety and federal aviation operations. The full list will be far longer, and the harm much greater.

Even though entitlement programs were largely protected, the sequester was the terrible result of reckless brinkmanship. It could reduce the nation’s economic output by half a percentage point in 2013 alone. Much of it can still be averted if Republicans would agree to a balanced, long-term deficit-reduction plan that includes higher taxes on the rich. The best way to achieve that goal — shocking both parties into action — is to let the public see the awful details of the alternative.