Mackenzie Eaglen is a resident fellow at the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
When it comes to foreign and defense policy, the headline coming out of President Obama's first State of the Union in his second term could easily read: "Nothing new here."
While it was encouraging that the first topic the president tackled was the federal budget and the looming sequester, he simply recycled his proposals of the past 18 months and again called for more taxes to solve the problem. This is puzzling because the Budget Control Act was written and agreed to in order to address the ever-growing federal budget deficit. It was a law passed with the sole intent of controlling spending. Now, the president wants to change the rules halfway through the game and try to avert automatic budget cuts under sequestration in a manner similar to the fiscal cliff deal: more taxes and little meaningful or real spending cuts.
[See a collection of political cartoons on the budget and deficit.]
It was noteworthy the president then started the long-overdue conversation on the need for entitlement reform. This is a conversation the Republican Party is anxious to have with the president since these programs consume the majority of the federal budget.
But if the "fiscal cliff" negotiations are the starting point for currently nonexistent sequestration negotiations, the president is still unwilling to offer the kind of entitlement reform proposals that he previously put on the table during the summer of 2011. This lack of good faith will only guarantee sequestration goes into effect.
[Check out our editorial cartoons on President Obama.]
This time around, it is President Obama who desires a change in current law to avert sequestration. If the president is serious about averting sequestration, then he will take the lead in offering specific budget and legislative proposals to cut spending elsewhere.
Otherwise, the headline on March 2 will read much like those following the State of the Union address declaring: "More of the Same in Washington."
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