Staking out his ground ahead of a fiscal deadline, President Barack
Obama lashed out against Republicans, saying they are unwilling to
raise taxes to reduce deficits and warning that the jobs of
essential government workers, from teachers to emergency responders,
are on the line.
Obama spoke as a March 1 deadline for automatic across-the-board
spending cuts approached and with Republicans and Democrats in an
apparent stalemate over how to avoid them.
Obama cautioned that if the $85 billion in immediate cuts — known
as the sequester — occur, the full range of government would feel
the effects, from furloughed FBI agents to reductions in spending
for communities to pay police, fire personnel and teachers.
He said the consequences would be felt across the economy.
“People will lose their jobs,” he said. “The unemployment rate
might tick up again.”
“So far at least, the ideas that the Republicans have proposed
ask nothing of the wealthiest Americans or the biggest
corporations,” Obama said. “So the burden is all on the
first-responders or seniors or middle-class families.”
House Speaker John Boehner countered that replacing the president’s
sequester will require a plan to cut spending that will put the
United States on the path to a budget that is balanced in 10 years.
“Just last month, the president got his higher taxes on the wealthy,
and he’s already back for more,” Boehner said. “To keep these first
responders on the job, what other spending is the president willing
to cut?”
U.S. Rep. Steve Womack said the House has already passed two bills
to replace the sequester with spending cuts and tax reform.
The alternatives, proposed by House Republicans, would target some
spending and extending some of the reductions over a longer period
of time. They also have said they are willing to undertake changes
in the tax code and eliminate loopholes and tax subsidies.
“The President already got additional revenues at the beginning of
the year,” said Womack, an Arkansas Republican. “It is now time to
deliver on the spending cuts we desperately need.”
Obama's remarks came a day after he returned to Washington from a
three-day golfing weekend in Florida.
Congress is not in session this week, meaning no votes will occur
before next week and complicating the ability to negotiate any
short-term resolution.
Obama wants to offset the sequester through a combination of
targeted spending cuts and increased tax revenue. The White House is
backing a proposal unveiled last week by Senate Democrats that is in
line with the president's principles.
But that plan was met with an icy reception by Republicans, who
oppose raising taxes to offset the cuts. GOP leaders say the
president got the tax increases he wanted at the beginning of the
year when Congress agreed to raise taxes on family income above
$450,000 a year.
Republican Sen. John Barrasso said Sunday the country should be
prepared for the sequester and its massive spending cuts to kick in
next month, despite a proposal by Democrats last week to avert it.
“Let me be very clear — and I'd say this to the president as I say
it to you — these spending cuts are going to go through on March 1,”
Barrasso, of Wyoming, said on CNN's “State of the Union.”
“Taxes are off the table,” Barrasso and other Republicans have said
repeatedly.
“The American people need to know tax cuts are off the table and the
Republican Party is not in any way going to trade spending cuts for
a tax increase,” Barrasso told CNN.
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has advocated
plugging loopholes, but as part of a discussion on a tax overhaul,
not sequestration.
“Loopholes are necessary for tax reform,” Ryan said Sunday on ABC's
“This Week.”
“If you take them for spending, you're blocking tax reform and
you're really not getting the deficit under control,” said Ryan.
The sequester was first set to begin taking effect on Jan. 1. But as
part of the “fiscal cliff” negotiations, the White House and
lawmakers agreed to push it off for two months in order to create
space to work on a larger budget deal.
Meanwhile, a bipartisan proposal Tuesday by co-chairs of an
influential deficit-reduction commission called for reducing the
deficit by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years, with much of the
savings coming through health-care reform, closing tax loopholes, a
stingier adjustment of Social Security's cost of living increases
and other measures.
Rank-and-file Republicans told The Hill newspaper Monday they're in
no fear of political blowback from the sequester cuts. In fact, many
are excited that the severe cuts are finally going to be enacted.
Obama has been a detached leader who has been unable to provide the
necessary leadership in Washington on pressing spending issues, Rep.
Jack Kingston told Newsmax.
“He's still in campaign mode,” said the Georgia Republican. “I think
the president has no credibility and is on a fantasy tour. It's
great politics. It's poor leadership.”
Republicans see the sequester as the best way possible to actually
reduce government spending, which they see as the biggest threat to
the nation. They also are ready to note the spending cuts will
affect their own offices, The Hill pointed out.
“The bigger concern is what is good for the country,” Rep. Bruce
Lamborn, R-Colo., told The Hill. He will have to lay off one of his
own staffers because of the sequester.
Republicans are also getting ready to battle by reminding voters it
was the White House that came up with the sequester.
The cuts were meant to serve as an incentive for a supercommittee of
lawmakers to produce a different deficit-reduction plan, Lamborn and
other Republicans point out. But the supercommittee failed, and now
sequester looks very likely.
It's doing exactly what it was designed to do: impose painful cuts
on both defense and nondefense spending so that Republicans and
Democrats would feel political pain.
“It was his [Obama’s] idea. We know that there are elections coming
in 2014 — we know that the president and the party will be all out
to reclaim the House — but we have acted in good faith, so the
president can put all this on Republicans all he wants, but that's
just not the fact,” Womack earlier told The Hill.
Conservative groups like the Club for Growth and the Heritage
Foundation have urged lawmakers not to waiver from their stance, and
predict political advantage from the cuts taking effect.
“If [Republicans] don't shy away from this, if they don't run from
their own shadows and they don't [buckle] at the last minute, I
think it's a battle they can win,” conservative Heritage Action
spokesman Dan Holler said.
“The reason [Republicans] lose the battling war to the president so
often is they can't get themselves on a clear path as to where they
want to go. This is pretty easy, this is law,” he added.
“President Obama opposes any substantive spending cuts while calling
for new government programs and spending, with ever higher taxes to
pay for the excesses of his administration,” added Americans for
Prosperity President Tim Phillips.
“Taxpayers are tired of Obama’s broken promises,” Phillips said in a
statement. “Spending cuts are given lip service, but we’ve seen time
and again that the tax hikes are real and the cuts never actually
happen.”
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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