Last year, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, also known as the “super committee,” failed to agree on over a trillion dollars in budget cuts. This failure has triggered the looming “sequestration” of an additional $500 billion in defense dollar cuts over the next 10 years, among other mechanical cuts to other parts of the budget. But you wouldn’t know that from the budget released this week by President Barack Obama.
Rather, Obama’s budget numbers hue closely to those in last year’s debt ceiling deal known as the Budget Control Act, as if the super committee had never existed. This is understandable at one level. But ignoring reality will not make the most drastic cuts to the military in U.S. history go away.
Commentary
Op-edThe Specter of Sequestration
February 24, 2012