Across the board spending cuts work

Which is why the Democrats lost on the sequester. [Link]

The whole sequestration gambit has failed, to the point where even the Washington Post's Ezra Kleinadmits that "the Democrats have lost on sequestration." The idea was that even the comparatively minor cuts in spending caused by the sequester would be so painful that voters would demand higher taxes rather than endure cuts in spending.

Problem was, when the spending cuts came, nobody noticed. This led the Obama administration to try to up the pain by focusing cuts in places where people might feel the pain: canceling White House tours for schoolchildren, or furloughing air traffic controllers.

That didn't work either. The tour-canceling just looked mean, and the problem with targeting air travel is that members of Congress, and their top donors, fly a lot. Huge bipartisan majorities in Congress thus quickly passed legislation forcing the FAA to make cuts elsewhere instead.

The whole thing was a bust, and has me thinking that someone in Congress -- or, if he's smart, President Obama -- ought to propose more across-the-board cuts as a means of addressing our swollen deficit and national debt. Critics of across-the-board cuts always say that we should make "smart cuts" instead of using a "meat axe." But the reason why we have a ballooning national debt is that our politicians are clearly incapable of making "smart cuts."

When my own state, Tennessee, was facing budget difficulties a few years ago, our then-governor Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, ordered across-the-board cuts. Nobody liked it, but it brought things under control. Many other states have responded to budget difficulties in similar fashion. So why not try more of it at the national level?