No Profile In Courage



What is it about these conservatives?

That could mean a thousand things, but in this case it's an obsession with proving one's manhood.  Karen G. Handel, who went on to become an executive at Susan G. Komen for the Cure (and later resigned amid scandal), told her gubernatorial primary opponent in Georgia in 2010 it was "time to put the big boy pants on."  S.E. Cupp, who holds the conservative seat on MSNBC's hideous "The Cycle," criticized Ron Paul's hints of secession, stating "We put on our big boy pants and get down to business."

And now it's a man.  Britt Hume is exorcised because Barack Obama recognizes a con when he sees it. Hume complains about the President not wishing to take full authority for the sequester cuts and according to a cut played by Rush Limbaugh's producer, remarked

This has been pretty clear. The administration doesn't want this. The president seems prepared to let the public suffer almost as much as possible as long as he can blame somebody else. This is not what we expect of presidents. Presidents, in the end, are supposed to be the people who put on their big-boy pants and are prepared to shoulder responsibility -- and if they're criticized for using that responsibility or authority, so be it. 

There is no "if" about it.  We read

The Homeland Security Department released from its jails more than 2,000 illegal immigrants facing deportation in recent weeks due to looming budget cuts and planned to release 3,000 more during March, the Associated Press has learned.

The newly disclosed figures, cited in internal budget documents reviewed by the AP, are significantly higher than the “few hundred” illegal immigrants the Obama administration acknowledged this week had been released under the budget-savings process.

The government documents show that Immigration and Customs Enforcement released roughly 1,000 illegal immigrants from its jails around the U.S. each week since at least Feb. 15. The agency’s field offices have reported more than 2,000 immigrants released before intense criticism this week led to a temporary shutdown of the plan, according to the documents.

The states where immigrants were released include Arizona, California, Georgia and Texas.

Once the Administration "put on its big boy pants," the Repub reaction was swift.  Virginia's Chuck Grassley, ranking minority member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Bob Goodlatte, chairperson of the House Judiciary Committee, charged "Simply blaming budget reductions as a means to turn a blind eye toward the national security of the American people is a dangerous plan, and one that calls into question the department’s preparations for sequestration.”

The White House and Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano, blessed with plausible deniability, denied being aware of the release. White House spokesman Jay Carney said the individuals were "low-risk, noncriminal detainees" whose release was ordered by career officials at I.C.E.

Carney could have noted that when the budget of the federal government is cut, the damage is widespread and extends to law enforcement.  When one Party tries to bleed the government dry, to deny it of funds, this is what happens, he might have reminded them. Then Carney might have told them that releasing non-violent illegal immigrants has nothing to do with national security.

Republicans can put on their "big boy pants" anyway they want to and even trying to have it both ways, telling their base they're cutting spending, then complaining when it happens.  Still, there is little that is more cowardly than stripping government of its ability to function, then denying all responsibility for the consequences.




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Targeting Earned Benefits


Rick Perlstein of The Nation notices that given a choice between responsible governance and decimating government, the modern Republican Party, as in the past, has chosen the latter. The damaging impact on the nation's economic health is not a bug, but a goal to be attained. Perlstein, shaking his head in wonder at an administration which thought it might have a party to negotiate with, writes

So: the “sequester.” That too-clever-by-half notion, born of last year’s debt ceiling negotiations out of the White House’s presumption that, when faced with the horror of heedless, profligate, across-the-board budget cuts to all manner of popular government programs, the Republicans’ “fever would break”—remember that?—and the Loyal Opposition would somehow come to agree to a reasonable, “balanced” deficit reduction package. It all seemed so cut and dried in those palmy days, just a few months ago: who could possibly imagine a major American political party could possibly let such madness actually go into effect?

Um, me? I wonder how many folks within the White House, gaming out whether Republicans might not just call the bluff, bothered to consider the fact that an embrace of heedless, profligate, across-the-board budget cuts to all manner of popular government programs is a key component of hardcore conservative ideology. That, when Barry Goldwater proclaimed in his 1960 manifesto Conscience of a Conservative, “I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size …. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them …. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ ‘interests,’ I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty,” that Barry Goldwater—and the future millions for whom his sentiments became an ideological touchstone—meant what he said.

Did anyone in the White House notice how many conservatives, including ones in positions of governmental power, after Mitt Romney’s recorded back-room admission that he couldn’t get elected because 47 percent of the electorate is addicted to suckling on the federal teat, responded that what he said was absolutely correct? (Even if they admitted it was unfortunate a public unready to handle it had to hear it.) That conservatives, as an article of faith, see breaking the link between citizens and their government benefits as the only sure way to break the link between voters and the Democratic Party? And that severing that same link is also the best way way to restore the broken moral fabric of the nation? (Which is one explanation Republican governors use to defend their determination not to accept free federal money to qualify more of their poor citizens for Medicaid under Obamacare: They are saving their citizens from wicked dependency. Their other explanation is that Obama must necessarily be lying to them—but that will have to be the subject for another post).

And what could the White House have predicted conservatives would say to those who point out that pulling the rug out from under huge chunks of federal spending will spur a recession? They could have predicted that many would say exactly what they have said: that since it’s excessive federal spending that causes recessions, what’s wrong with cutting excessive federal spending?

Bottom line: didn’t anyone whose job it is to think about such things consider that at least some powerful Republicans—not all, it is true—would relish sequestration as a marvelous thing, a historic opportunity, a gift from Obama to help further the cause they’d been proclaiming as sacred for generations: to shrink the federal government small enough so they could someday drown it in Grover Norquist’s proverbial bathtub? “Once these cuts take effect, thousands of teachers and educators will be laid off and tens of thousands of parents will have to scramble to find childcare for their kids,” said Obama. Did he ever consider that to a lot of Republicans, that would sound like a wish list?

Well, yes.  Reuters reported Sunday afternoon

President Barack Obama raised anew the issue of cutting entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security as a way out of damaging budget cuts, a White House official said on Sunday, as both sides in Washington tried to limit a fiscal crisis that may soon hit millions of Americans.

Signaling he might be ready to explore a compromise to end automatic spending cuts that began late Friday, Obama mentioned reforming these entitlement programs in calls with lawmakers from both parties on Saturday afternoon.

"He's reaching out to Democrats who understand we have to make serious progress on long-term entitlement reform and Republicans who realize that if we had that type of entitlement reform, they'd be willing to have tax reform that raises revenues to lower the deficit," White House senior economic official Gene Sperling said on Sunday on the CNN program "State of the Union."

As we've all come to know, "reform" of entitlements always means a cut in earned benefits.  To conservatives and the neo-liberals who dominate this Administration, the terms "Social Security" and Medicare" are the words that dare not to be uttered.

Not so for House Democrats, most of whom in mid-February sent to the White House a letter "to affirm our vigorous opposition to cutting Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits in any final bill to replace sequestration."

"Vigorous opposition." Huh. Soon afterward, two members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus composed a letter pledging addressed a letter to the White House vowing they " will vote against any and every cut to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security benefits -- including raising the retirement age or cutting the cost of living adjustments that our constituents earned and need."   Ten days after it was first circulated among their colleagues, the letter had been signed by only 16 of 54 members of the Caucus, as well as five other members of the House of Representatives.  

A majority- 107-  of House Democrats told the President they "remain deeply opposed to proposals to reduce Social Security benefits through use of the chained CPI" and "to increase Medicare cost-sharing requirements or to raise the age of eligibility."  They proceeded to " urge you to reject any proposals to cut benefits..."  Later asked to promise to "vote against any and every cut" to entitlements, the numbers plummeted by nearly 500%.

Fortunately, President Obama isn't offering Republicans a 500% cut in earned benefits.  But he is setting up members of his own caucus to approve reductions in Social Security and Medicare in what the media will term a "compromise" and Obama will sell to fellow Democrats as a victory, much the way he sold Rube Goldberg health care reform as a great accomplishment.  That goal was facilitated by the actions of President Obama who, in Dean Baker's words, "decided to play deficit reduction games rather than being truthful about the state of the (faltering) economy."

Echoing Perlstein, one of the smartest people in American politics, Paul Begala, cites Obama's "faith in the reasonableness of others" and finds his "cardinal political error has been that at times he seems to lack the imagination to even conceptualize how truly nihilistic, irresponsible, partisan, and, yes, crazy his Republican opponents are."

But Begala recognizes also the President "is nothing if not smart."  He is "nothing if not smart" and knows where he is taking the country, even if some members of his Party haven't figured it out yet.




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Today's Moment Of Trivia


In late January a local CBS station reported the Governor

... has signed a new law that allows undocumented immigrants the right to obtain a drivers license.

Hands were raised holding cell phone cameras as the governor signed into law the right for undocumented immigrants to get a driver’s license in Illinois... now the fourth state where undocumented immigrants can get a driver's license. the first driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants are expected to be issued starting October 1.

The governor stated "And this is a day we have long waited for lots and lots of people over many years banded together in the best traditions of democracy to make this day possible."

The governor is (Democrat) Pat Quinn. And the state is Illinois.

That would be unremarkable but for it being either ironic or, to the contrary, entirely appropriate.  The issue of drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants derailed the presidential candidacy of a Senator from New York- and paved the way for the nomination (and election) of a Senator from Illinois.  Hillary Clinton was first in the polls, riding high and the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee when in a debate televised on October 30, 2007 by MSNBC

Clinton gave a contradictory answer on the issue to host Tim Russert. 

When Russert pointed out that Clinton had told a New Hampshire newspaper that New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer's plan to give driver's licenses to illegal aliens made a lot of sense, Clinton at first seemed to defend Spitzer's plan. Then, she appeared to distance herself from it. 

"Why does it make a lot of sense to give an illegal immigrant a driver's license?" Russert asked Clinton in that debate.

"We know in New York we have several million at any one time who are in New York illegally," said Clinton. "They are undocumented workers. They are driving on our roads. The possibility of them having an accident that harms themselves or others is just a matter of the odds. It's probability. So what Governor Spitzer is trying to do is to fill the vacuum."

After Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, also participating in the debate, sharply criticized the proposal to give driver's licenses to illegal aliens, Clinton hedged her support for Spitzer's plan. "I just want to add, I did not say that it should be done, but I certainly recognize why Governor Spitzer is trying to do it," she said.

Dodd, however, would not let her get away with it. "Wait a minute. No, no, no," he said, interrupting Clinton. "You said, yes, you thought it made sense to do it."

"No, I didn't, Chris," said Clinton.

Eventually, in that same debate, however, Clinton seemed to once again defend giving driver's licenses to illegal aliens, while criticizing Russert for trying to make her give a clear statement of her position.

"Well, what Governor Spitzer has agreed to do is to have three different licenses; one that provides identification for actually going onto airplanes and other kinds of security issues, another which is an ordinary driver's license, and then a special card that identifies the people who would be on the road," she said.

To which Dodd rejoined: "That's a bureaucratic nightmare."

Russert finally said, "I just want to make sure what I heard. Do you, the New York Senator Hillary Clinton, support the New York governor's plan to give illegal immigrants a driver's license? You told the Nashua, New Hampshire, paper it made a lot of sense. ... Do you support his plan?"

"You know, Tim, this is where everybody plays gotcha," said Clinton. "It makes a lot of sense. What is the governor supposed to do? He is dealing with a serious problem. "

A moment later, Clinton added: "Do I think this is the best thing for any governor to do? No. But do I understand the sense of real desperation, trying to get a handle on this? Remember, in New York we want to know who's in New York. We want people to come out of the shadows. He's making an honest effort to do it."

This major misstep did not end Mrs. Clinton's campaign but ended its inevitability.  Support for the New York Senator was fairly wide but not very deep, and her vulnerability was exposed when she grossly mishandled the question about a major policy announced by the governor of the state she represented in the U.S. Senate.

And then- in a curious twist- in a later debate, on CNN

...moderator Wolf Blitzer similarly sought to pin down Obama's position on driver's licenses for illegal aliens.

"On the issue that apparently tripped up Senator Clinton earlier, the issue of driver's licenses for illegal immigrants, I take it, Senator Obama, you support giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. Is that right?" asked Blitzer.

"When I was a state senator in Illinois, I voted to require that illegal aliens get trained, get a license, get insurance to protect public safety. That was my intention," said Obama. 

After Obama started to hedge, Blitzer responded "Do you support or oppose driver's licenses for illegal immigrants?"    When the Senator stated "I am not proposing that that's what we do. What I'm saying is that we can't .. ," the audience laughed.  Graciously, the Wolfman then quizzed the other candidates but thereafter returned to Obama and asked him "Senator Obama, yes or no?"  The reply was "yes" while Clinton's answer this time was "no."

In an additional twist, the day before this debate, Governor Spitzer had announced a reversal of his position because of strong public opposition.  The issue in New York which thwarted Hillary Clinton's smooth path to the nomination had become moot.  But in Illinois, the issue has been decided to the advantage of illegal immigrants, which could not have been envisioned by Hillary Clinton when it mattered most to her and to her and Senator Obama.

(hat tip to Disaffected And It Feels So Good)


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The Republican Media- No. 37


Salon's Alex Pareene, describing in February, 2011 a trip by former Arksansas governor Mike Huckabee to east Jerusalem, wrote

Huckabee is not just moved by the inspiring story of the Jewish people. His support for the Jewish State is tied up in his apocalyptic religious beliefs. He’s had the “Left Behind” nut on his show. Huckabee is an evangelical Christian — he loves Israel because he associates it with the coming of the End Times. He supports the most right-wing elements in Israeli society because he believes that “half way through the Great Tribulation, Antichrist will enter the restored Temple and declare himself to be God.”

Whatever he's motivated by, it's not by a generous, or even open-minded opinion, of Jews.   The Raw Story reports that Huckabee spoke before the Celebrate Life event of the Iowa Republican Party last month and stated

And now we are called into this incredible Holocaust of our own in America.  Fifty-five million babies. Fifty-five million babies since 1973 have died in what ought to be the safest place in the world, their mother’s womb. It has become one of the most dangerous places for a baby to be. For us, this is not about the politics of Democrat or Republican, winning or losing — it is about our capacity to one day stand before a holy God and give an account for whether we stood between life and death for those who had no voice but ours.

Huckabee believes abortion is the taking of a life, and there would be no reason not to compare it to the annihilation of more than six million Jews by the Nazis... if abortion were a holocaust.  But it's not.   Merriam-Webster defines "holocaust" as

1   a: sacrifice consumed by fire
2   a: thorough destruction involving extensive loss of life especially through fire
3   a: often capitalized : the mass slaughter of European civilians and especially Jews by the         Nazis during World War II —usually used with the
     b: a mass slaughter of people; especially : genocide


Obviously, abortion has nothing to do with fire.  Nor is it "a thorough destruction..." nor "a mass slaughter of people."  "Slaughter" is the killing of a large number of people; a "mass slaughter" may be redundant, and emphasizes the elimination of many people in one incident.  Abortion, to the contrary, is the killing, or not the killing, one-by-one, the result of an individual decision by an individual woman in isolation from other women considering the procedure.

Abortion clearly is not a "holocaust."  There is, however, good reason for rabid anti-abortion rights fanatics like Huckabee to use the incendiary word.  It fires up the activists and, because it veers into the area of religion, there is little chance the media, aside from attentive bloggers such as Kaili Joy Gray, will give it more than a passing glance.   And given the way in which the mainstream media is intimidated by the GOP, 'passing glance' probably exaggerates the response.





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Sequester Disinformation


Syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer, who has a sincere and extraordinary distaste for Barack Obama, gets it wrong at least three times.  Then I stopped counting.

Krauthammer is incensed that President Obama, he charges, is spreading panic over the automatic spending cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011.  He argues

The problem with sequestration, of course, is that the cuts are across the board and do not allow money to move between accounts. It’s dumb because it doesn’t discriminate.

Fine. Then change the law. That’s why we have a Congress. Discriminate. Prioritize. That’s why we have budgets. Except that the Democratic Senate hasn’t passed one in four years. And the White House, which proposed the sequester in the first place, had 18 months to establish rational priorities among accounts — and did nothing.

Congress does not pass a "budget."  Most years, it passes a budget resolution, which the President neither signs nor vetoes because it is not a law but a mere blueprint for the appropriation process.
It is conceivable that Krauthammer doesn't understand this, likely most of his readers don't, and as certain as snow in Buffalo in winter that the vast majority of his viewers on GOP TV don't.

But he probably realizes the disingenuousness of claiming that the President's proposal that spending cuts (which, thus far, have far outstripped revenue increases) be matched by tax increases "demonstrates that, for Obama, this is not about deficit reduction, which interests him not at all. The purpose is purely political: to complete his Election Day victory by breaking the Republican opposition."

Apathy toward deficit reduction is a Republican game, not a Democratic one, as demonstrated by statements of long-time GOP consultant Mike Murphy, who is lionized as a "moderate."  Ezra Klein explains that Murphy on February 13 wrote

in Time that “six magic words can unlock the door to the votes inside the Republican fortress: Some beneficiaries pay more and chained CPI, budgetary code for slightly lowering benefit increases over time.” The only problem? Obama has said all these words, as John Harwood of the New York Times quickly pointed out:

Murphy responded by suggesting that sure, Obama has called for more means-testing in Medicare, but he’s not put chained CPI — CCPI, if you’re hamstrung by Twitter’s 140-character limit — on the board:

Obama never refused chained CPI as part of a cliff deal. In fact, he did the opposite: He endorsed it as part of a cliff deal, and he’s kept endorsing it, as his sequestration plan clearly says, since the cliff deal fell apart. This was quickly pointed out to Murphy on Twitter, at which point, he promptly proved Chait’s thesis correct:

Then Murphy retweeted this:

So let’s back up. Murphy’s initial view was that to unlock GOP votes for a budget deal, Obama just needed to endorse chained CPI and more means-testing in Medicare. Then it was pointed out that Obama has endorsed means-testing in Medicare, so Murphy wondered why he didn’t endorse chained CPI as part of a deal. Then it was pointed out that Obama did endorse chained CPI, at which point Murphy called chained CPI “a gimmick,” and said Obama had to endorse raising the Medicare age, drop his demands for more revenue as part of a deal and earn back the GOP’s trust.

Recall what Chait said would happen if the Republican legislator in my column was forced to react to the fact that Obama has endorsed chained CPI: “He would come up with something – the cuts aren’t real, or the taxes are awful, or they can’t trust Obama to carry them out, or something.” Check, check, and check.

Which is all to say that there’s no deal here. A few tweets later, Murphy gave his bottom-line view, which is that if Obama wants a deal, he needs to drop all of his demands and just agree to what the GOP wants to do:

Technically, Obama did move first on spending. Over the course of 2011, Obama signed into law a set of bills that cut about $1.8 trillion from discretionary spending, and that included no tax increases at all. One of those bills, the Budget Control Act, also gave us the sequester, so you could argue they included closer to $3 trillion in spending cuts — all, again, without a single tax increase. It didn’t seem to build much trust.

Krauthammer doesn't stop with distorting the budgetary process and with charging that  the triangulating President Obama is unconcerned about the deficit. He slams the White House for allegedly failing to "establish rational priorities among accounts," then a few paragraphs later with an "intent to deliberately make the most painful and socially disruptive cuts possible (say, oh, releasing illegal immigrants from detention."

While harmlessly splitting infinitives, Krauthammer pulls a nifty sleight-of-hand.  He blames President Obama for not establishing priorities, then, once the latter does, whines about the priorities he has set.

This could be a metaphor for GOP propaganda the past 35 years on taxes and spending.  Cut income taxes, they've claimed, and revenues magically increase.  Now, it's cut the budget and programs and personnel magically remain unharmed.  The aphorism "there is no such thing as a free lunch" has been turned on its head in Repubthink.  It seems there is, indeed, such a thing as a free lunch.

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The Essential Obama


On the post immediately preceding this one, I quoted Gene Sperling, economic advisor to President Obama, as having written in an e-mail to Bob Woodward

The idea that the sequester was to force both sides to go back to try at a big or grand bargain with a mix of entitlements and revenues (even if there were serious disagreements on composition) was part of the DNA of the thing from the start. It was an accepted part of the understanding — from the start. Really. It was assumed by the Rs on the Supercommittee that came right after; it was assumed in the November-December 2012 negotiations.

Credit for highlighting that statement, in an e-mail which has become much more famous for the controversy over an alleged threat to the author and  Washington Post reporter, must go to Firedoglake's Jon Walker.  On Thursday, Walker captured the essence of President Obama's budget strategy; in a larger sense, his economic strategy; and in a still larger sense still, his entire Presidency.   The following is the full post, verbatim:



The way Obama has handled basically every manufactured crisis from the debt ceiling, to the Bush tax cuts expiration, to the sequester has been about trying to force both Democrats and Republicans to embrace his version of a “grand bargain.” While it is clear this has been the driving force behind Obama’s decisions, if you pay close attention to his actions is is rare than an administration official will directly admit this. This is actually what I think it most interesting about the recently leaked email exchange between Bob Woodward and Gene Sperling up on Politico. Sperling wrote:


But I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying saying that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim. The idea that the sequester was to force both sides to go back to try at a big or grand bargain with a mix of entitlements and revenues (even if there were serious disagreements on composition) was part of the DNA of the thing from the start. It was an accepted part of the understanding — from the start. Really. It was assumed by the Rs on the Supercommittee that came right after: it was assumed in the November-December 2012 negotiations. There may have been big disagreements over rates and ratios — but that it was supposed to be replaced by entitlements and revenues of some form is not controversial. (Indeed, the discretionary savings amount from the Boehner-Obama negotiations were locked in in BCA: the sequester was just designed to force all back to table on entitlements and revenues.)
(emphasis mine)



Obama wants to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits. Obama also wants to raise taxes, but he only wants to do these unpopular things if he can get bipartisan cover to destroy basic democratic accountability. If everyone is to blame than no one is to blame.

What has sometimes been viewed as incompetence on the part of Obama during negotiations is actually Obama trying to weaken Democrats’ hand to “force” them to accept entitlement cuts while being able to blame it on the mean Republicans.

That is why even now Obama isn’t calling for the sequester to be simply repealed or delayed. Obama still wants to use this manufactured crisis to force congressional Democrats to betray their base by adopting Social Security cuts and get Republicans to accept revenue increases.



Walker has described, with more elegance and substance than I, a President who looks at a chessboard and sees three and four moves in advance.

When Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, U.S. Senators with their eye on the White House, voted to support President Bush's invasion of Iraq, Barack Obama knew to speak out against it.   When Hillary Clinton in 2007-2008 believed one candidate would grab the momentum and run away with the nomination, Barack Obama sent David Plouffe out to work on delegates one by one in both primary and caucus states.   And a few years earlier, Senator Obama sensed the mood of the nation for bipartisanship, vague religiosity, and freedom from overreaching government when he declared before a nationwide audience

The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.

It takes quite an historic President to maneuver members of the party of (F) Roosevelt and Truman to vote to cut Social Security and Medicare.  But he has gotten Democratic congressmen (of both houses) to vote to make permanent tax cuts for the wealthy, to overhaul a health care system without offering even a public option, and to go silent on a regimen of spying and prosecution of whistle-blowers which should make George W. Bush figuratively blush.      And a cut in Medicare and Social Security benefits probably lies down the road unless Democrats recognize what is happening to the country, and to them.



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Somehow, Some Way, He Gets It Wrong


The nation now has gone over the cliff twice in the space of two months.  Amid predictions of the end of life as we know it- the meaning of going "over the cliff"- the President on January 2, 2013 signed the bill Congress had passed the previous day.  Apparently, that reversed gravity and sent the nation back onto the cliff.  However, the legislation merely delayed the day of reckoning two months, until March 1, 2013.

March 1 is here, and John McCain is incensed.  He asked rhetorically on Fox News "This is a dangerous world. We just saw this morning North Korea, the tensions are there, the centrifuges are spinning Tehran, the Middle East is in a state of unrest and one of these places could explode at any moment — and we’re going to have further cuts?"

Due primarily to House Republicans, President Obama, and the deficit scolds who told us for a couple of years that failure to reduce dramatically the deficit would send the nation hurtling into oblivion, reductions of $109 billion, divided equally between defense and non-discretionary domestic spending, are to take place over the next seven months.

The Budget Control Act of 2011 mandated further cuts, of $1.2 trillion, if a supercommittee could not come up with its own formula to slice the deficit.  Fortunately, however, Senator McCain boldly stood in opposition, determined that major decisions not be sloughed off to another committee, which passes for leadership in Washington.

Oh, wait- there has been a mistake.   It seems the senior Senator from Arizona, the 2008 Republican nominee for President, voted in favor of the Budget Control Act of 2011.   Now, having voted for a bill which takes a meat cleaver to both defense spending and domestic spending, he is alarmed.  He is alarmed- alarmed! that the reductions to defense he voted for will be taking place.

To be fair (which, as a liberal, is required), McCain charged also

In the campaign, the president of the United States said in two sentences that, one, sequestration won’t happen, obviously that was wrong.  And two, he said that it was Congress’ idea. We now find out from Mr. Woodward that was obviously not the case. It was not Congress’ idea. It was the White House’s idea. So we’re starting now with a credibility gap, at least in my view, that’s rather serious.

There, John-Boy almost has a point.  Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann (not this Thomas Mann) explain

The sequester’s origins can’t be blamed on one person — or one party. Republicans insisted on a trigger for automatic cuts; Jack Lew, then the White House budget director, suggested the specifics, modeled after a sequester-like mechanism Congress used in the 1980s, but with automatic tax increases added. Republicans rejected the latter but, at the time, took credit for the rest. Obama took the deal to get a debt-ceiling increase. But the president never accepted the prospect that the sequester would occur, nor did he ever agree to take tax increases off the table.

Bob Woodward had argued that the President had "moved the goalposts" by proposing additional revenues as part of the sequester.   In rebuttal, however, the latter's economic adviser, Gene Sperling, sent to Woodward (the now famous) e-mail in which he maintained

The idea that the sequester was to force both sides to go back to try at a big or grand bargain with a mix of entitlements and revenues (even if there were serious disagreements on composition) was part of the DNA of the thing from the start. It was an accepted part of the understanding — from the start. Really. It was assumed by the Rs on the Supercommittee that came right after: it was assumed in the November-December 2012 negotiations.

While the intransigent, tax-phobic GOP appeared to maneuver Obama into supporting a plan which might entail automatic spending cuts, the President's economic adviser acknowledges "the idea that the sequester was to force both sides to go back to try at a big or grand bargain with a mix of entitlements and revenues."

John McCain despises Barack Obama and invariably finds a reason- generally a bad one- to attack the President.   That's o.k.; most of us have someone we really, really don't like.  But imagine the Arizonan facing a dartboard separated into equal sections of numbers of 1 to 20. Numbers 1 through 7 and 9 through 20 are winners.  John McCain, every time, hits on number 8.

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