The “party of growth” has announced that it’s looking to cut 0.7 percentage points off our GDP growth rate. “I think the sequester is going to happen,” Paul Ryan said on Meet the Press, referring to the set of spending cuts scheduled to hit March 1—cuts that would mainly target defense spending, but also the EPA and other public services. The Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein finds Paul Ryan less than credible, writing that Republicans “are so desperate for a hostage they can actually shoot, that they’re willing to point the gun at their own head and threaten to pull the trigger.”
Sensationalist metaphors aside, we prefer to think of the GOP as an angry old man firing pistol shots at the sky in an abandoned parking lot—that is, Klein is right and the GOP threats are mostly bluster. So while it seems like nobody’s going to get hurt over the upcoming sequester showdown (except possibly the Republicans), it’s also important for progressives to pay attention and help ensure major cuts don’t happen—just like they did in the recent round of debt-ceiling negotiations. Then maybe everyone can come out of this thing unscathed.
From The Balance Sheet newsletters@prospect.org
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