A report out today from the Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee shows costly new flaws in Congress’ approach to fiscal policy. Beyond providing updated information on the anticipated impacts to specific programs from the across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration, the report shows Congress’s piecemeal approach to “fixing” sequestration is more than just unfair – it’s costing the U.S. more money.

Since the threat of sequestration failed to spark a spending compromise and the haphazard slashing began, lawmakers have faced uneven amounts of pressure to replace chunks of sequestration cuts from varying groups. The success of that pressure seems to hinge on the political influence wielded by the group affected by a given cut. Unemployment beneficiaries, Head Start students and parents, 140,000 families on housing assistance, and seniors who rely on Meals on Wheels, among many other politically marginalized groups, have received no relief from sequestration.

Business travelers, on the other hand, have seen their outcry over airport delays due to sequestration yield a “fix” for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Today’s report goes beyond that unfairness to explain how the piecemeal “fix” to avert flight delays is actually raising the economic costs of aviation delays, by tens of billions of dollars:

The [Reducing Flight Delays] Act [of 2013] allowed the FAA to apply sequestration to the Airport Improvement Program (AIP), which had been exempt in the original sequestration order. […]

Cutting the AIP program slows FAA’s ability to meet construction needs. FAA estimates that development needs at eligible airports will exceed $42.5 billion over the next five years. The American Society of Civil Engineers 2013 “Report Card for America’s Infrastructure” rated our aviation system a “D,” estimating that the cost of congestion and delays to the economy will rise to $34 billion in 2020 (up from $22 billion in 2012), and that “D” grade assumes we continue to spend at current funding levels — before sequestration.

Even before Congress gave the FAA permission to halt all airport construction funding, America faced a $12 billion increase in the economic drag caused by aviation congestion. Now that cost is going to swell.

These can-kicking costs come on top of the more immediate damage sequestration will do to the economy: 700,000 fewer jobs and a 0.6 percentage-point reduction in GDP growth for the year. The Huffington Post reported several of the mechanical details of individual agency responses to the cuts contained in today’s House report, including 500 fewer firefighters at the Forest Service and a shrunken stockpile of vaccines at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Conservative U.S. politicians continue to press for austerity, but on the other side of the world, Australia’s government is moving in the opposite direction. That country largely escaped the economic downturn thanks to its abundant natural resources. But now Australia anticipates an economic contraction, and the government is adjusting its priorities accordingly.

Treasurer and Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan announced the shift from deficit reduction to economic investments in a speech to parliament, Bloomberg reports:

Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan will eschew European-style austerity as a stronger currency slows growth, wagering the government can win a Sept. 14 election fought on jobs and absorb the pain of a broken surplus promise. […]

“To those who would take us down the European road of savage austerity I say the social destruction that comes from cutting too much, too hard, too fast is not the Australian way,” Swan told parliament. “The alternative, cutting to the bone, puts Australian jobs and our economy at risk.”

Swan outlined a longer path back to the black that funds pledged spending on infrastructure, education and disability care, while saying restraint gives the Reserve Bank of Australia scope to cut record-low interest rates even further.

The reversal, forecast in December, acknowledges the economic reality that rapid austerity exacerbates economic troubles.

Meanwhile, the American fiscal policy debate has veered the other direction since 2011. Without the austerity measures Republicans have pushed and President Obama has signed over the past two years, economists say the U.S. unemployment rate would be a full percentage point lower. Obama’s American Jobs Act was projected to spur over two million new jobs when the White House proposed it in the fall of 2011, but Republicans blocked the bill. The U.S. will create 700,000 fewer jobs this year alone thanks to House Republicans’ decision to go ahead with massive “sequestration” cuts.

Congress shouldn’t need the Australian example, though. The contrast between the American recovery under fiscal stimulus and Europe’s austerity-driven return to recession is widely reported. The economic research Republicans have cited as motivation for immediate and sharp deficit reduction was proven entirely bogus just weeks ago.

Senate Democrats passed a budget for the first time in four years earlier this year, a move that would seemingly please the Republicans who spent the last four years reminding everyone of the fact that the Senate hadn’t done so. But now, with the House and Senate sitting on differing budget proposals, Senate Republicans have blocked four efforts to form a conference committee that would be tasked with forming a compromise budget.

Here are seven times Republicans have chastised Senate Democrats for not passing a budget since September of last year (and assuredly, it’s not a comprehensive list), including two instances in which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) blasted them for not moving to the type of bicameral conference committee the Republicans are now blocking:

1. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY): “A second term presents the opportunity to do things differently, and in the Senate that means a return to regular order. Later this week, the House plans to send the Senate a bill to address the debt limit in a timely manner. Once we get it, the Senate should quickly respond. If the Senate version is different than the one the House sends over, send it off to conference. That’s how things are supposed to work around here. We used to call it legislating.” [Senate floor, Jan. 22, 2013]

2. McConnell, again: “Why aren’t we trying to do something about reducing spending? We know we need to do it. When are we going to do it? We don’t need to use the deadlines. We could go through the regular order. Congress could pass bills. They could have conferences between the House and Senate.” [ABC, Jan. 6, 2013]

3. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN): “We have not had a budget in this body for 1,240 days.” [Senate floor, Sept. 20, 2012]

4. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX): “1,387 days since the United States Senate has passed a budget.” [Senate floor, Feb. 14, 2013]

5. Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN): “It has been 1,372 days since the United States Senate passed a budget.” [Senate floor, Jan. 30, 2013]

6. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA): “Let’s get back to the business of America. Let’s get a budget to the floor.” [Senate floor, Sept. 20, 2012]

7. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO): “These problems are big, but they are not necessarily that complicated. We just have to have the willpower to deal with them. This Congress has not done that. This Senate, more importantly, has not done that. The House has passed bills. The House has passed a budget.” [Senate floor, Sept. 20, 2012]

The reasons why the GOP doesn’t want to go to conference is clear: they don’t want to consider any compromise that may include new revenues (the Senate budget raised $975 billion) or that raises the debt ceiling, which will need to be upped before October at the latest. Previous deals to reduce the deficit have been comprised primarily of spending cuts, and any further deficit reduction would have to be 90 percent revenues to bring balance to the total package of reductions since President Obama took office.

As Brian Beutler explained, both new revenues and an early, clean debt limit increase are untenable to Republicans, who hold less popular political positions on both. So instead of going to the conference the GOP spent four years demanding, they’ve chosen to block it from forming.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) slammed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R) for being a “schoolyard bully” on the Senate floor Monday, after Cruz blocked an effort to move forward on budget negotiations Republicans in the House and Senate have demanded for the past four years. The GOP, which spent those years blaming Senate Democrats for America’s supposed “runaway spending” because they hadn’t passed a budget, attached a provision to fiscal cliff negotiations requiring the passage of a budget plan.

But now that Senate Democrats have followed through and passed a budget, Republicans in both the House and Senate have rebuked efforts to form a budget conference meant to hammer out the differences between the Senate budget and the plan passed by House Republicans. Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) blocked Senate efforts to form a conference last month; Monday, it was Cruz who blocked Reid’s effort to go to conference because he wanted to first ensure that the committee would neither consider new revenues nor a debt ceiling increase.

“The senator from Texas was on the losing side. He had his view, and it lost. But now he wants us to agree by consent to adopt the losing side’s view or else he’s not going to let us go to conference,” Reid said, adding that Cruz was “like a schoolyard bully” who “pushes everybody around” when he is losing. “Why are my Republican colleagues so afraid?” Reid asked. “We have our differences but Democrats aren’t afraid to work out those differences.”

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, have both said they wouldn’t enter conference until both sides agreed on a “framework” for those negotiations. But Cruz made it clear what that framework meant: the GOP will again demand that a final budget document includes only spending reductions and no new revenue, the same demand they have made — and that Democrats have met more than once — in previous negotiations over deficits and debt. Any new deal, in fact, would have to find 90 percent of its deficit reduction from revenue to bring balance to overall reduction efforts since President Obama took office.

So after spending four years demanding a budget, Republican intransigence on revenues is now causing them to block negotiations that could actually lead to one.

House Republicans spent most of their time over the last three years reminding Americans that Senate Democrats hadn’t passed a budget in two, then three, then four years. It was a regular Republican talking point, a particular favorite of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s. But now that the Senate has returned to regular order by passing a budget, House Republicans are refusing to come to the table to negotiate a long-term spending plan.

Republicans passed their own budget, the plan Ryan authored, in March, and since the proposal differs from the Senate budget, regular order requires the two chambers to come together in conference to iron out their differences in a compromise budget that is then taken back to the full memberships of each house. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has hinted at forming such a conference for more than a week, but Republicans have shown no willingness to join him. This morning, Senate Republicans blocked Reid from creating a conference committee, a move that led Reid to accuse them of turning “a complete 180″:

“It seems House Republicans don’t want to be seen even discussing the possibility of compromise with the Democrats for fear of a Tea Party revolt,” Reid said.

He noted that Republicans have called for “regular order” for years.

“A strange thing happened: House Republicans did a complete 180 — they flipped. They’re no longer interested in regular order even though they preached that for years,” Reid said.

The GOP offered numerous excuses for why they wouldn’t approve a conference, including that certain rules need to be worked out. Ryan and Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions (R), the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, have said they need to agree to “framework” for a deal to make a compromise more likely.

What that “framework” would need to be to get Republicans to agree to conference, however, is clear: a deal that cuts spending but includes no new tax revenue. That has been a consistent GOP demand throughout budget and spending fights over the last three years, a sticking point that has brought the government to the brink of both shutdown and default. It’s also a concession Democrats and President Obama are unwilling to make, given that they have already agreed to nearly $2.5 trillion in spending cuts while receiving little revenue in exchange. Any new deal, in fact, would have to achieve 90 percent of its deficit reduction from tax revenue to balance the overall reductions achieved in the last four years.