Senate aides confirmed Friday that Republicans are coalescing around an
alternative to the sequester that would keep the lower spending levels
in place, but give federal agencies greater flexibility to determine
where the cuts are implemented.
The exact details of the Republican proposals are unclear. A GOP Senate aide told Business Insider
that Republicans are considering a plan that would fund the government
at the levels dictated by the sequestration — which amounts to about $85
billion in spending cuts for fiscal year 2013 — while giving the Obama
administration the flexibility to reprogram the cuts at their
discretion, provided that the balance remains between defense and
non-defense discretionary spending cuts.
As TPM's Brian Beutler points out, the plan — which has gained traction among prominent conservative commentators, including the National Review editorial board and Karl Rove — is politically savvy for several reasons.
First, it deals with the
biggest problem of the sequester, namely its meat-cleaver approach to
spending cuts. This undercuts the White House's main argument against
the sequester, which is that the cuts are arbitrary, and therefore
threatening.
In reality, $85 billion is a relatively small number when it comes to the federal budget.
The Department of Transportation, for example, only needs
to find $1 billion in cuts this year, or about 2 percent of its $55
billion budget. If the cuts are not applied uniformly to every program,
it's hard to imagine that the DOT could not cut $1 billion from the
department with marginal impact to its workforce and to everyday
Americans.
The second benefit to
the GOP plan is that it allows Republicans to avoid the political
pitfalls of proposing their own budget cuts, and forces the Obama
administration to determine — and take ownership — of the spending
cuts.