Not So Automatic

The defense industry, Pentagon officials, and members of Congress have been predicting all manner of nasty consequences if defense budget sequestration happens as planned next January. Our own Gordon Adams’ recent column for The Hill, however, puts these concerns in perspective:

What Congress makes it can unmake, and unmake it Congress will after the election, carving out a new short-term deal from the many issues on the table: the debt ceiling, tax cuts, a doctors’ payment fix, the alternate minimum tax, payroll taxes. Congress will boot sequester down the road, and continue to argue.

As we pointed out last year, four of the five previously planned sequesters have been eliminated or scaled back. This time, Congress might prove slow to act and do little more than put the issue off for another year. Nonetheless, don’t hold your breath waiting to see the dreaded “meat-ax” of sequestration come slicing down on the defense budget in January.