Harry Reid endorses the sequester

In a telling moment with reporters yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who voted for the sequester in 2011, said that the spending cuts should take place if no deal is brokered with House Republicans for more tax revenue:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would support letting the $85 billion in across-the-board sequestration cuts take effect on Friday if Republicans don’t agree to increasing taxes as part of an alternative plan, the Nevada Democrat said on Tuesday

“Until there’s some agreement on revenue, I think we should just go ahead with the sequester,” Reid told reporters after a meeting with Senate Democrats.

Basically, the scare tactics haven’t worked. They’re not going to work. With that statement, Reid is admitting that everything — all of the fearmongering and brow-beating of Republicans — was just for show.

Since getting their tax hikes earlier this year in the “fiscal cliff” deal, President Obama and his allies in Congress have been pushing for even more tax hikes. The proposal being pushed by Senate Democrats, according to Dean Clancy, would enact the pointless Buffett Rule gimmick and close tax loopholes and make around $55 billion in spending cuts over 10 years. Those spending cuts aren’t even real cuts — they’re just reductions in the rate of spending increases.

And as we’ve explained countless times before, the sequester itself doesn’t actually represent any real spending cuts over the next 10 years. Again, it’s just a very small reduction in the rate of spending increases.