Published for National Review’s ‘The Corner’, February 20, 2013

Sequestration is certainly not a smart way to manage federal spending. Some programs are more important than others, some programs are better able to sustain spending reductions than others, and any cuts should be prioritized accordingly. The sequester doesn’t do that. It was proposed by the White House and accepted by Congress precisely to avoid a debate about specific prioritization and just pass the debt ceiling deal in 2011. They hoped the “supercommittee” might agree on some kind of prioritization (and perhaps especially on entitlement reforms that could add up over time). But that didn’t happen, and here we are. This was the only way the parties could agree on to implement modest cuts.