Budget and Deficit

An opinion piece by Tom Giovanetti, president of the Institute for Policy Innovation, lays out the case not only for celebrating the sequester, but for beginning to plan for the second round of it.

Thanks to Washington’s failure to keep the growth of government in check or even adhere to any kind of rational budget process, the Great Sequester of 2013 should be celebrated, not feared, says a new IPI publication.

Because Congress and the president have failed to rein in federal spending, their sequester is a laudable "blunt tool" that should be celebrated, not feared. Sequester spending reductions are minuscule, so the whining of the Government Class should be ignored. And if our federal government doesn’t get its act together, we should employ more such blunt tools.

Embrace the sequester as the first meaningful restraint on federal spending in almost twenty years. In fact, let’s start planning the next one.

Unlike typical government meddling in prices, President Obama’s policies always seem designed to make prices higher.

President Obama has done more than any previous president to expand the welfare rolls, just don’t expect him to claim much credit for it in the State of the Union.

Any politician who can’t stomach the sequester cuts—which aren’t nearly large enough to put us on a sustainable fiscal path—isn’t serious about restraining federal spending. Let the sequester happen.

A real, across-the-board federal spending freeze, exempting nothing, would balance the budget without tax increases and would equalize the sacrifice without pitting special interests against each other.

President Obama won’t trade the spending cuts for an increase in the debt-limit ceiling; fine, federal spending cuts are coming anyway.

Using a legal loophole to violate the intent of Congress with a magic $1 trillion platinum coin would have far more dangerous results than anything resulting from the debt ceiling standoff.