Why doesn't Congress just repeal the Sequester?
Voila! Problem gone!
With Washington mired deep in the manufactured crisis known as sequestration, one option for resolving the crisis is getting almost no attention: Simply repealing the sequester.
That may now change. The AFL-CIO is coming out today for a repeal of the sequester. The labor federation will press the case in the days ahead that the sequester perpetuates destructive government-by-crisis, and that more austerity — replacing the sequester with other spending cuts — is exactly what the country doesn’t need at a time of mass unemployment and lackluster growth.
“We need to repeal the sequester,” Damon Silvers, the policy director of the AFL-CIO, told me in an interview this morning. “It’s bad economic policy, and it feeds a dynamic that encourages hostage taking. We are calling on elected officials not to play this game of substituting one bad thing for another bad thing. We’re insisting that our elected officials not buy into this inside Washington game of manufactured crises.”
This morning, the AFL-CIO’s executive council voted unanimously to call for repeal of the sequester, and I’m told the AFL-CIO planning to organize events designed to mobilize behind this goal in the days ahead.
There are arguments against repealing the sequester. Republicans and many Democrats would immediately reject the idea, and the move could give Republicans an easy talking point to argue that Democrats are not serious about cutting spending. It could lead Republicans to conclude Dems think their negotiating position is weak — leading Republicans to dig in on their cuts-only position even harder. And some Dems worry that turning off the sequester permanently with no further deficit reduction could result in an immediate credit downgrade.
