予算強制削減 (sequestration)問題 －予算案のめど、まったく立たず
３月に始まった予算の強制削減だが、議会での対立は深刻で、大統領側と共和党側との対話はほとんどとぎれたままで、互いに相手を批判しあうという状況が続いており、予算案が成立する見通しは絶望的にまで、立っていない。秋になると来年の中間選挙に向けての戦いが始まるため、この夏にめどが立たないと、どうにもならなくなる。そうした状況にアメリカの政治状況は追い込まれている。きわめてこれは国内的な問題である。
この問題は２０１１年の夏に、国債発行の限度額引き上げ問題をめぐる対立の中、大統領が予算削減を妥協として飲んだことから始まっている。その後、両者のあいだでの削減合意が成立せず、自動的に大幅な予算削減が強制的に執行されることになり、それがこの３月１日から始まっているというわけである。軍事支出と社会保障支出が削減の主要対象であるが、何らかの「作られた危機」(manufactured crisis)が生じないかぎり、歩みよりはみられない。これがいまのアメリカの政局である。
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As sequestration cuts bite, Congress is
content with recrimination
With partisan campaigning for the 2014 midterms looming, the window of opportunity for better budget policy is closing fast
Heidi Moore
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 4 July 2013 16.14 BST
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. Photograph: Pete Marovich/ZUMA Press/Corbis
Even for a Congress as remorselessly unproductive as this one, the summer of 2013 presents a unique challenge: there is a lot of work to avoid accomplishing on several important pieces of legislation, from the farm bill to immigration reform to passing a budget.
All of these topics stirred up controversy at the Aspen Ideas Festival, a yearly gathering that draws luminaries and the intellectually curious to a town deliberately far from the world's problems so that they can be examined and contemplated from afar. But you can't get far enough from this Congress's problems, and in particular, the sequestration plan to cut the federal budget willy-nilly; it has dominated most of the economic and political panels.
"It's an awful, awful piece of legislation," former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin groused about the sequestration.
Current Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warned:
"I don't think the consequences of sequestration are policies that are good for the country or broadly what the American people want … I have a fairly high degree of confidence that what was designed to be a bad policy is going to have consequences that are very unattractive."
But there was a new, still more bitter perception: the feeling that Congress just doesn't care anymore. David Rubenstein, the co-founder of the powerful Washington investment firm the Carlyle Group, noted that sequestration – designed to be terrible – has not increased Congress's desire to pass a real budget. In fact, it's done the opposite:
"The deficit is down to $350bn [from more than $1tn], so the ardor to do anything has completely gone."
Lew, while pledging to get something done, also steered clear of promising that it would get done this summer:
"I think we have to get on to the debate of how do we have alternative policies to do deficit reduction and make room for the kinds of investments that will keep America on the cutting edge in the next generation. And I can't tell you if that's going to be the next two months or not."
When someone in Washington says he's not sure if something is going to get done "in the next two months or not", you can count on "not". That means you can forget about a budget passing this summer.
It's a wonder if one will pass at all. In previous years, Republicans threatened not to raise the debt limit, which meant they refused to allow the Treasury to pay the bills run up by Congress. That provided them with some leverage on budget negotiations – a stupid sort of leverage, which they now wisely seem to have abandoned as an option. It also means that without a manufactured crisis, there is no urgency to a budget solution.
This confirms that the stalemate is here to stay. The variety of comments from the Aspen conference shows that the expectation of progress on the matter of the budget is most likely a pure illusion. A lot of attendees and speakers complained – either privately or in public – about the destructive stubbornness of the other side.
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