With the economy teetering on a knife edge, it is clear that this is the worst moment to initiate an indiscriminate budget cut. Government spending at this time can spell the difference between growth and shrinkage. But Republicans are willfully blind to this reality. Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the second-ranking Republican, called it a “Keynesian pipe dream” last week, saying that only spending cuts will help the economy.

Congressional Republicans seem perfectly serene about allowing the sequester to take effect in a few weeks, so eager to prove they are budget cutters that they are willing to ignore the coming economic storm. “I think sequester’s going to happen,” said Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma. “I think people want it to happen.”

But it was never supposed to happen. The sequester was designed to be so dire that both parties would want to find a better way to reach a budget deal. The incentive for Republicans was the huge cut to defense spending, but an ideologically rigid generation of deficit hawks has shouted down the defense hawks, leaving Democrats with no negotiating partner. Republicans have repeatedly voted to replace the defense cuts with more domestic cuts, but the overall impact on the economy would be the same.

Congress should be thinking about ways to accelerate the economy, instead of remaining preoccupied with a short-term deficit. Nonetheless, the coming job losses could be sharply reduced if half or more of the spending cuts were replaced by revenue increases, as President Obama and Congressional Democrats have demanded. That would lower the amount of spending pulled out of the economy to bring down the deficit, replacing the cuts with taxes from the rich or companies with high cash reserves that are less likely to spend it.

The money could be raised by eliminating tax loopholes for energy companies, hedge fund managers and other high-end recipients of federal largess, but Republicans won’t even consider the idea. “The tax issue is finished, over, completed,” Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, said recently.