GOP's new fiscal gambit: Endorse spending cuts they don't really want

Republicans might have more luck seeking leverage if they knew what it meant. Politico's David Rogers gets to the bottom of what the GOP's newfound enthusiasm for sequestration is really all about:

Fresh from their 2010 election victory, House Republicans wasted no time demanding $65 billion in cuts from discretionary spending, setting off an appropriations fight that only ended in April 2011 after narrowly avoiding a wartime government shutdown.

Two years later, the GOP is back, endorsing a second, almost identical $69 billion appropriations cut ' not because the party really believes in the reductions but because it's looking for leverage to force President Barack Obama to accept alternative savings from benefit programs like Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps.

Unlike 2010, that $69 billion budget cut doesn't represent a new proposal, however. Instead, it would be the first wave of the sequestration cuts that both parties voted for during the 2011 debt limit fiasco. Rogers does the math, demonstrating just how severe the austerity measures would be:

Discretionary spending for 2013 is now set at $1.043 trillion but would drop below $980 billion and quite possibly to $974 billion under automatic spending cuts set to take effect March 1. That takes the government solidly into political territory previously defined by only the conservative Republican Study Committee, which had championed a budget plan last year to bring appropriations down to $931 billion and even lower in 2014.

Just seven months will be left in the 2013 fiscal year to absorb this cut, meaning the impact will be severe for many agencies. Compounding the havoc is the fact that large departments like defense must manage these cuts while living under an already rigid continuing resolution set to expire March 27.

Rogers quotes House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon saying that he's resigned himself to the view that the sequester spending cuts are going to happen, but keep in mind that this is the same Buck McKeon who last year said he was so deeply opposed to those spending cuts that he regretted his 2011 vote for the debt limit deal that created the cuts in the first place. It's not just McKeon: other Republicans on his committee are aghast at the coming cuts. During the presidential campaign last year, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan regularly attacked President Obama for signing them into law, even though Ryan had voted for them. So it's clear Republicans do not like the spending cuts as they currently exist and do not want them to take place.

Continue below the fold for more on how Republicans are pushing Democrats to support the one thing that they like even less than the sequester's spending cuts.