The New Rule of Holes: Keep Digging

Matt Kibbe has his toes dangling off the fiscal cliff and advises:

This is no time to get cold feet.

Congress made a promise to the American people to produce those savings. Now, some members of Congress are concerned the sequester’s defense savings are too deep. But that’s not a good reason to “call the whole sequester off.” Rather, it’s a reason to come up with a new mix of defense and non-defense savings by Jan. 1. The overall level of savings is a promise to taxpayers that must be kept.

There’s must, and then there’s must-must, and then there’s modern American politics, where the only must is to get reelected.

So of course Washington must enact savings. But it mustn’t must-must enact savings, in the way a brick must fall to the ground when you drop it. The Senate won’t even take up discussing a budget, even though there’s a law saying — wait for it — that it must. Mandates apply only to you and to me.