Endorsements and editorials are made solely by the ownership of this newspaper. As is the case at most newspapers across the nation, The Spokesman-Review newsroom and its editors are not a part of this endorsement process. (Learn more.)

Editorial: Congress’ fiscal game of chicken hurts us all

Sat., Sept. 29, 2012

On Sept. 21, when members of the U.S. House of Representatives made their earliest pre-election exit since 1960, many Americans probably figured, “What’s the harm? It’s not like they were doing anything anyway.”

Getting very little accomplished helps account for Congress’ 13 percent approval rating, which makes members about as popular as replacement NFL referees in Green Bay. It’s the lowest rating ever recorded by the Gallup Poll in an election year.

This wouldn’t be so bad if the nation didn’t face so many challenges. But a dastardly budgetary deadline looms. The quaking can be felt in capitals all across the country, because the automatic cuts that would come from a continued budgetary stalemate would reverberate through state and local budgets. The governor’s office hasn’t compiled a breakdown of the possible hits to the Washington budget, but the carnage promises to be extensive.

So how did we get here? Like just about every political dilemma these days, it can be traced to the perpetual game of chicken that Congress insists on playing. This chapter began last summer when Congress and the president tried to come up with a balance of spending cuts and new revenue that would serve as a significant down payment on the burgeoning deficit.

So, Congress did what it does best: It formed a committee. In fact, it was a “super committee” made up of equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats, including Sen. Patty Murray. To reinforce the seriousness of its mission and to close all escape hatches, Congress handed panel members an ultimatum: Come up with a deal or $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts over the next decade will kick in. They named this zombie “sequestration,” and armed it with a meat ax.

It didn’t work. The panel failed to compromise.

So, unless Congress can come up with a plan by Jan. 2, the chopping will commence. A total of $110 billion would be cut in 2013 alone, but it won’t be the kind of precision cutting that would target the fat and limit the bleeding. All of the cuts are aimed at discretionary programs, which as a portion of the overall budget have been shrinking anyway. Everyone knows that Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security represent the true budgetary challenges. That’s where the federal budget is growing most. But Congress put them off-limits.

That leaves items like defense, education and safety net programs, all of which would take inordinately large hits.

Federal spending on low-income and special education students would be gutted. Higher education would also be slashed. This as lawmakers in Olympia already face a $1 billion shortfall in K-12 funding, and they’ve practically defunded colleges and universities. Back-filling federal cuts would be daunting.

In addition to that mess, the Bush tax cuts are set to expire at the end of this year, and that combined with sequestration forms the “fiscal cliff.” Go over that, the Congressional Budget Office has noted, and the country is sure to land in a recession. That, in turn, means less revenue for state and local governments.

This is all avoidable, but nothing will get done until the elections are over. If the same old game of chicken resumes, the impact will be immediate. It’s time for the adults to take the wheel.