FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION.

WORDS. 

"Our feckless leaders may be incapable of passing a budget, but, boy, can they pass the buck. The White House spent last week in full campaign hysteria, blitzing online followers with the message that heartless Republicans are prepared to transform America into “Les Misérables” in order to protect “millionaires and billionaires, oil companies, vacation homes, and private jet owners.” Republicans retort that the budget-cutting Doomsday device called sequester was actually invented by the White House.

In fact, the conceptual paternity of sequester was bipartisan. Both sides agreed that Congress should set in motion an automatic deficit-cutting scheme so draconian that it would force a divided Washington to come together around some sane compromise. The scandal is that Washington is so incapable of adult behavior that it can do the right thing only if it is staring down the barrel of a shotgun — and, it turns out, not even then.

 ...Now that we have entered the sequester zone, Washington has assumed (or is feigning) a mood of resignation bordering on complacency. The Republicans may hate whacking defense, but they don’t hate it enough to offer up any more taxes, regardless of what the polls say. So they have adopted the view that while the sequester may be crude at least it cuts government spending — austerity on autopilot.

...And the president? For weeks he has been playing the game political scientists call “Fireman First.” That’s when scaremongering politicians threaten to cut the most essential services. It’s true, the sequester is a grotesque and hurtful substitute for the kind of reforms the country needs. Bad things will happen. Maybe the furloughs and canceled contracts will stir the public enough to break the impasse. But by the weekend even the president was sounding helpless, if not acquiescent.

Clearly the days of “putting off unpleasant decisions” are not over. And this is where they get you."

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Obama's Fault