Rejecting the president's budget also means passing over a host of good ideas — chief among them, replacing the arbitrary and damaging sequestration cuts with more sensible reductions, along with ways to make the rich pay a larger share of revenues.
Yet sequestration's arbitrary cuts — particularly to certain defense and domestic programs that provide the foundation and seed for future growth — make it far from optimal as a deficit-cutting action.
But the White House, eager to end the arbitrary cuts known as sequestration for both military and domestic programs, has not linked taxes and Pentagon spending for a short-term budget deal covering a year or two.
In the debate over the arbitrary spending cuts called sequestration, many people warned of the long-term consequences to our children and their futures.
Senator John McCain, who presided over the hearings, said in his introductory remarks that "we cannot afford to believe that our intelligence agencies are omniscient and omnipresent, especially after years of sequestration and arbitrary budget caps".
While the recovery was gaining traction before sequestration took effect, these arbitrary and unnecessary cuts to government services will be a headwind in the months to come, and will cut key investments in the Nation's future competitiveness".
"While the recovery was gaining traction before sequestration took effect, these arbitrary and unnecessary cuts to government services will be a headwind in the months to come, and will cut key investments in the nation's future competitiveness," Alan B. Krueger, the chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, said in a statement.
Negotiators are struggling just to keep alive their talks for a minimalist compromise, one that would replace the arbitrary across-the-board cuts known as sequestration for the next year or two.
That law, called the Budget Control Act (BCA), led in 2013 to sequestration, those across-the-board, arbitrary cuts that nobody thinks are a good mechanism to determine funding levels.
And we have to build on the bipartisan budget agreement I signed in 2013 that helped us end some of the arbitrary, across-the-board budget cuts known as "sequestration".
