I agree. Or at least they should be done concurrently. To the extent that Congress has never been able to actually achieve spending cuts while increasing taxes is because they wrote lousy law. Putting the words on paper that would require tax increases to be contingent on spending cuts isn't all that complicated. Any halfway decent lawyer could put those words on paper...probably on only a handful of pieces of paper.

The reason that it's never been accomplished before is that Congress doesn't want to actually cut spending. And that goes for both parties. They've both been in power when taxes were increased based on spending cuts which never happened. Politicians of both stripes love it when they get more money to spend and don't have to explain to anyone why their favorite government program was cut or eliminated.