The Pain of the Sequester Beginning to Be Felt

     Since the sequester started in March the question has been when will the pain be felt? A related question to that was would it be felt at all? After all, it's possible that while people at the local level might suffer from it, and there has been plenty of local news about services being cut back and government workers losing hours or their jobs, maybe this was too diffuse to ever rise to the general consciousness of the nation.

      At this point, the pain is starting to rise to consciousness which is made clear by the fact that you have Congress pointing fingers at who's to blame. The President was chided for being alarmist in February, but we are now seeing airport delays as he had warned.

     The GOP is-this is a new one-blaming the President for not cutting something else. Harry Reid now has an idea on doing something about the delays and other ill effects of the sequester and, the GOP isn't interested:

      Amid GOP complaints about airport delays caused by sequestration, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said he intends to promptly introduce legislation to use war savings to pay down automatic, across the board spending cuts for five months.

     “I think we should do something about sequestration. It’s important we do,” he told reporters at his weekly Capitol briefing. “We should do what was in one of the Ryan budgets, and that is use the overseas contingency fund to delay the implementation of sequestration. We could do it for five months. During this five month period, we could come up with something longer-term.”

     http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/04/airport-delays-reid-sequestration-faa-war-savings.php?ref=fpb

     So with Republicans expressing outrage-they have to as their middle class constituents are feeling the pain-how can they refuse to put a stop to the delays?

     "The move leaves Republicans with a tough choice. Outside the context of the Ryan budget, they have routinely opposed using OCO funds for anything other than deficit reduction, dismissing the idea as a budget gimmick. But amid complaints from middle class constituents inconvenienced by air-traffic delays, they may have a hard time blocking a measure that promises temporarily and painless relief."

      So how can they justify opposing it? McConnell complains that Reid's plan-get this-doesn't have any tax increases:

      Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) office told TPM that it shows Reid is rebuffing President Obama’s insistence that a sequester delay plan include tax revenues.

     “Remember, the White House said they won’t accept any sequester replacement that that doesn’t include even more taxes,” McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said in an email. “Sen. Reid is rejecting that ransom and making clear that Democrats in the Senate are willing to replace the spending cuts in the sequester with other spending cuts.”

      "Meanwhile, Ryan’s spokesman William Allison disputed the contention that the House budget chief’s blueprints rely on war savings. “Senator Reid is absolutely incorrect,” he said in an email. “Not a single penny of claimed spending reductions in any of the recent budgets put forward by House Republicans come from this gimmick.”

       So if Reid is offering to replace spending cuts with more spending cuts why won't McConnell and friends take the deal? McConnell's spokesman is contradicting Ryan's in that he apparently doesn't see using war savings to get rid of the sequester as a 'gimmick.'

       So what example is the nature of the opposition to Reid's plan? Even the GOP doesn't know-it just makes this stuff up as it goes along. This is true not just of this issue but the overall position of the party in 2013. Oppose something if the Democrats support it even if it's something you used to support yourself and use arguments that you used to argue against.