Obama Presents A False Choice On The Sequestration
Barack Obama is giving a little speech/press conference on the sequestration that is starting today.
He's blasting the Republicans for letting these cuts go through, and arguing correctly that they will harm the economy.
But he's also presenting a false choice.
He's saying that the reasons the cuts are going forward as they are is because the Republicans aren't agreeing to any deficit reduction in terms of closing tax loopholes.
But that's not the only choice. We could just cancel the cuts, and not replace them anything.
Obama's frame only makes sense if there's some existential reason that we need to have deficit reduction now. There isn't. It's totally arbitrary. And someone should be making the case to cancel the cuts, without making up the deficit reduction elsewhere.