The Unkindest Cuts

President Obama is trying to avoid the sequestration of budget expenditures due to take effect next Friday by suggesting a mix of spending cuts and modest tax increases, but House Speaker John Boehner has already made it clear that House Republicans will not accept any more tax increases on anyone, even though the increases they agreed to in late December are hardly enough. And according to the Senate Appropriations Committee, the spending cuts scheduled for next Friday, March 1, would - if allowed to take effect - cause 600,000 women and children to lose nutrition aid (women and children last?), cause 125,000 families to lose housing aid, cut 70,000 children off from head Start, and reduce cancer screenings by 25,000. Among other things.

Oh yeah, and I've heard about cuts to the air traffic control system.

President Obama can only lose this battle. Forced to agree to budget sequestrations by House Republicans back in 2011, he now has to negotiate with a House Republican leadership that includes a Speaker who has decided . . . not to negotiate with the White House. Ultimately, any severe spending cuts hurt the President, who's the face of the federal government, but House Republicans are immune from any blame they get for these cuts thanks to their gerrymandered districts, which allow them to remain in control of the lower congressional chamber for the next decade. It won't be until 2022, when the voters choose House members to represent new districts based on the next census, before the Democrats have a realistic shot at winning back the House. To put that into perspective, Republican control of the House will last through not only President Obama's second term but through the first term of Obama's successor and for two years after that, whether or not the 45th President of the United States is re-elected in 2020. And, given that Democrats are less spread out geographically nationwide and more clustered in metropolitan areas than Republicans, it's very likely that Republicans could continue to hold the House after 2022.

This means that Obama probably can't get enough done to ensure a political trajectory that favors the Democratic Party going forward. And so, immigration reform will be piecemeal at best, health care reform won't be expanded (forget the public option), gun control will be a no-go, and you can forget 80 percent of Americans having access to high-speed rail by 2035. (I want to know why 100 percent of Americans don't have access to high-speed rail now, but that's another issue.) This also likely means that the next President could be a Republican, especially if Obama doesn't leave the 2016 presidential nominee (Hillary Clinton? Joe Biden? Andrew Cuomo?) something to run on . . . like a sound economy, which these cuts threaten. You think the House will do anything that could help Obama - or improve Democratic chances of retaining control of the Senate in 2014? They're still strategizing on how to win total control of the government and sack everything. (Incidentally, the Democrats haven't won a third straight presidential election since Franklin Roosevelt's unprecedented and now constitutionally unrepeatable third term win in 1940, and no elected Democratic President has succeeded another since James Buchanan replaced Franklin Pierce in 1857.)

The Republican Party is about to undermine the President in defiance of the election results. And thanks to their shrewd maneuvering, there's little anyone can do about it. Prepare for worse to follow.