dare set in motion. that was the theory. would it hold? do you actually see anything changing until we do hit the government collapsing? i hope not. january 31st, bucks county, georgia. i believe in the constitution as our founding fathers made it. that s congressman paul brown. president obama had republicans like him in mind when he proposed the sequester. back in 2011. if we went back to the original intent of the constitution we wouldn t have a debt ceiling problem. people need to remember what the sequester is, how it came about. and that was over a fight over the debt ceiling. a fight andrew mccarthy of the national review says was picked by tea party republicans like brown. a lot of the professional politicians of both parties said, oh, they re crazy. they re going to cause us to default. they re going to throw the world economy into chaos.
more ominous, perhaps, for the president, nearly half the country thought he deliberately exaggerated the effects of those cuts. to try to scare people. and so, on march 1st, a unified republican caucus lets the sequester cuts go into effect. were democrats surprised that they actually did? i think each side was surprised. the democrats thought the republicans would be so upset about the defense cuts they d never let it happen. the republicans thought the democrats would be so concerned about cuts to education and things like that that they d never let it happen. and here it did. here it did. the sequester cuts only a small percentage of increases in federal spending. but that was still a huge accomplishment for small government conservatives. then, december 10th. democrat and republican negotiators agree to set aside the sequester, and increase spending, though they say their deal reduces the deficit. tea party groups howl. speaker john boehner bites back. frankly i just thi
of changes inside the republican party. where the automatic reflex of being pro-defense has been at least overlaid with an equally important impulse toward smaller government. it would take months for that x-ray image to fully develop. i think both parties have a sense that this would be a negative event for the economy. remember maryland congressman john delaney? well on february 12th, he headed to his first state of the union address. i don t think a sequester is going to happen. defense cuts were supposed to be a poison pill for republicans. yes. they were never going to swallow it back in the conventional wisdom of the past. the president of the united states. democrats, republicans, business leaders, and economists have already said that these cuts, known here in washington as the sequester, are a really
but eventually they forced a deal with the sequester on an unwilling washington. the deal was this. if republicans and democrats could not cut $1.2 trillion out of the growth of spending over ten years, automatic cuts would kick in. half would come from domestic spending. half from defense. that s why brown was torn over the sequester last winter. he desperately wants to downsize the government. except for the pentagon. we need to make targeted cuts, but we need to have a strong national defense. we need to spend more money on the military. the white house s calculation was that republicans would not be able to tolerate the sequester because of its impact on the defense budget. but former clinton adviser william galston says the sequester revealed something few in washington expected. it turned out to be an x-ray
december 12, the house passes the bill. but 62 republicans vote no, including tea party conservative paul brown. does this budget agreement roll back what republicans say they accomplished with the sequester? absolutely. there is no question. we ve got to stop spending. we ve got to do it today because that s the only way to stop this federal government that s out of control. months ago, few predicted the gop would agree to ease the sequester. but that was before an ill-fated tea party power play that began in earnest last summer. thank you. coming up, the limits of leverage, inside the long shot fight to defund obamacare