Republicans never intended to honor their debt deal.
According to TPM, Senate Democrats
think they have the upper hand over Republicans when it comes to the $600 billion of defense cuts Republicans agreed to in the debt deal, only to (very, very predictably) vow to renege on that same deal now:
Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has not only vowed to hold the line on the cuts, but he recently suggested Dems could use it to force the Republicans’ collective hand.
“The purpose of the sequester is to force us to act to avoid the sequester,” he said. “That sword of Damocles can not be splintered,” he continued, “if it’s going to have its effect.” The effect he said he meant was to “move the rigid ideologues to deal finally with revenue.”
Hmm. Color me skeptical, though we'd all love to see it. From the outset I thought the debt deal was absolutely terrible, because of course Republicans would turn around and nullify the supposed defense cuts long before they ever took effect. That was so obvious a move that the Democratic resistance to acknowledging it was outright insulting. And the leverage Republicans would have in such a fight is the same leverage they always have: calling Democrats "weak on defense," or saying it will "impact military readiness," or suggesting that Democrats want the terrorists to win. Then the Democrats predictably start sweating, and then they predictably fold, and the Pentagon gets another few so-expensive-they-should-be-carved-from-platinum jet fighters as trophies of the short-lived fight.
What Sen. Levin is suggesting here is perfectly reasonable, and is in fact the obvious strategy: Use these cuts to force Republican ideologues to choose between their desired defense budget and their entrenched opposition to raising any tax, under any circumstance, since it is obvious to any rational observer that the two goals cannot possibly be reconciled. But it presumes Democrats will honestly be willing to make that fight, and to block attempts to remove the defense budget from the budget agreement even as Republicans warn that the entire future of the free world depends on giving the Pentagon more and more and more money, and that you're a dirty communist and/or hippie and/or traitor if you think otherwise. What history exists here that would suggest Democrats would not cave in? Democrats have established a history of caving in nicely, which is exactly why the demands of the Republican leadership have gotten more and more extreme during each hostage-taking session.
Republicans willingly signed on to the defense cuts only a few short months ago. Now they're seen as apocalyptic, and impossible, and so dangerous that only a fool would do it. They knew, even back then, that they weren't going to honor the deal. And now, just as with every other goddamn negotiation of the past three years, we're reliant on an aimless Democratic caucus to negotiate for whatever hostage Republicans take this time around.
I will be very happy if Levin is right, and there is stomach this time around (perhaps thanks to Republican self-immolation on the payroll tax cuts) to hold firm on this issue and finally force Republicans to recognize that "tax cuts for rich people" is not the be-all, end-all of all national policy. The only evidence of it, however, would be that clearly non-conservatives cannot continue to acquiesce to these hostage-takings indefinitely—they are causing too much damage, economically, for the country to blithely accept—and so statistically there should be some point at which more moderate voices have gotten fed up enough to say "no more."