The looming sequester threatens to hoist the president by two of his own petards.
As Republicans are all too happy to remind him, he proposed the sequester during the 2011 debt ceiling negotiations. Assured that Republicans would never be able to swallow defense cuts, he was undoubtedly convinced that the impending threat of them would give him leverage in future budget/spending battles with Congress.
The $1.2 trillion in cuts also provide a ready-made rebuttal to his own counter-proposal of cuts mixed with tax increases. He has always called for a "balanced" approach to deficit reduction. Taxes were raised by hundreds of billions of dollars -- with no attendant spending reductions -- to avoid the fiscal cliff. Proportionality then dictates that the revenue hikes from last time be balanced with expenditure reduction this time.
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