Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin say that Congress should pass a law mandating automatic budget cuts and tax increases if it fails to hit targets. But if these automatic cuts and hikes were about to go into effect, wouldn’t it be easy to put together a bipartisan coalition to waive them? The Democrats would vote to stop the spending cuts and the Republicans to stop the tax hikes. If Congress isn’t willing to enact these spending cuts and tax hikes in the first place, I’m not sure how this mechanism will make them happen.