So the argument over the triggers has begun:
In light of Congressional Republicans’ abandonment of a key part of the debt limit agreement, two senior administration officials briefing reporters at the White House Monday said automatic, across the board cuts to defense programs will happen as scheduled unless Republicans relent on their refusal to raise revenues.
The officials conducted the briefing under the condition that they not be quoted directly, but their position was unambiguous — the White House will not support any effort to swap out scheduled cuts to defense programs (and other automatic cuts) unless Congress passes a balanced package of deficit reducing legislation of equal or greater measure. That means new tax revenue from wealthy Americans and corporate interests, which Republicans have routinely refused to consider.
I guess we’re supposed to be happy about this. But I don’t know why. The best case scenario for a deal is that we get large defense cuts and large cuts in domestic spending. The second best case scenario is that we get millionaire tax increases in exchange for the defense cuts and large cuts in domestic spending. In other words, we’re getting large cuts in domestic spending no matter what.
We knew something like this was going to happen. But it was not previously characterized this way. This is what Ezra wrote about it back in November:
Increasingly, no one fears the trigger. If it is activated, Republicans have spoken openly about undoing the defense cuts — and the White House and congressional Democrats would happily sign on. But the White House won’t allow the defense cuts to be lifted if the other side of the trigger — domestic cuts — isn’t also defused. So it’s simple to imagine the coalition that will disarm the trigger.
So trigger negotiations were supposed to be defense cuts vs domestic spending cuts. Now it’s defense cuts vs tax increases. Can you say bait and switch?
[T]hese cuts to domestic spending — totaling $294 billion over 10 years, starting with a 7.8 percent cut in 2013, and coming on top of the spending caps in August’s debt-ceiling deal — could have even harsher consequences, both for everyday Americans and for the ability of the United States to maintain a thriving, competitive economy in the years ahead.
“This isn’t just a bunch of bureaucrats in Washington who are going to have fewer jobs,” says Isabel Sawhill, a former associate director of the Office of Management and Budget now at Brookings, of the cuts. “This is going to affect public safety, it’s going to affect low-income people, it’s going to affect veterans’ health care. We can’t just wave our arms and pretend it won’t have an impact on people’s lives.”
First, let’s define terms. “Non-defense discretionary spending” has been known to glaze over eyes and induce snores whenever it’s thrown around. Which is part of why politicians like to cut it. Everyone knows what Social Security is. Everyone knows what Medicare does. But what about domestic discretionary spending? Well, it’s anything that falls into Congress’s appropriations budgets each year. It’s the Veterans Health Administration. It’s medical research at the National Institutes for Health. It’s low-income housing assistance. It’s the Coast Guard. It’s highway spending. It’s EPA clean-air enforcement.
Why is slashing the hell out of necessary government services the one area where we have bipartisan agreement? Here’s what they’ve agreed to, per Plumer:
Now, it’s hard to know what specific programs will get cut. Future congressional appropriators will have to thrash that out. But just to illustrate the scale here, Third Way has provided examples of what would happen if the the trigger’s 7.8 percent cuts were spread evenly, across the board, in 2013. We’d have 608 fewer food-safety inspectors, which would likely lead to some 49,000 more cases of Salmonella, E. coli, and other food-related diseases. We’d have 1,200 fewer FAA air-traffic controllers, which could lead to an estimated 205,527 more flight delays. There’d be 2,326 fewer IRS agents, which would likely lead to $4.5 billion less in tax revenue collected.
Indeed, the IRS example illustrates why many observers (see David Leonhardt here) think that cutting domestic spending is so short-sighted — and could, in some cases, worsen our deficit problems down the way. It’s more expensive to replace a highway later than it is to repair it now. Less scientific research could mean lower growth in the future, making it harder to muscle out of our debt burden. Gutting the IRS makes tax evasion easier, which means less revenue coming in.