House Republicans are over the Moon about Sequestration

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank questions the priorities of House GOP leadership in Tuesday's (Feb. 26) column.

With just four days left to stop automatic spending cuts from affecting everything from air travel to food inspections, House Republicans had but one item on their agenda Monday: renaming a NASA facility in California.

H.R. 667, as this urgently needed legislation is known, would “redesignate the Dryden Flight Research Center as the Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center.”

You’d have to be on another planet to think that renaming NASA operations is Congress’s most pressing order of business this week. But for Republicans, using this moment to honor the first man to walk on the moon is not lunar lunacy. The naming proposal, sponsored by Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), was taken up at a time when House Republicans are pursuing a considered strategy of deliberate idleness.