Cuts dig in after failure to act
Obama, Republicans still pointing fingers
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama signed an order Friday night authorizing the government to begin cutting $85 billion from federal accounts, officially enacting acrossthe-board reductions that everyone in government said they opposed but failed to avert.
Friday was the deadline for the president and Congress to avoid the steep, one-year cuts. Republican leaders huddled with Obama at the White House, but both sides emerged from the meeting blaming the other for the problem.
The administration has warned for weeks that the spending cuts — known in Washington as sequestration — will cause delays in air traffic, prompt teacher layoffs and hamper food inspections. But the White House has been accused of overstating the effects, and Obama said Friday that the $85 billion slice in federal spending, though painful
for a still-recovering economy, will be survivable.
“This is not going to be an apocalypse, I think, as some people have said,” Obama said. “It’s just dumb. And it’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt individual people and it’s going to hurt the economy overall.”
The cuts were designed by the administration and Congress in 2011 to be so objectionable to both parties that they would be forced to reach an alternative deal to trim projected deficits by $1.2 trillion over 10 years.
But resolution has proved elusive in partisan Washington.
Obama put the blame squarely on Republicans, who opposed replacing some spending cuts with tax increases. He wants a mix of tax revenues and spending cuts; Repub- licans say they already agreed to a tax increase in January to avoid an earlier fiscal crisis.
“None of this is necessary; it’s happening because of a choice that Republicans in Congress have made,” Obama said. “They’ve allowed these cuts to happen because they refuse to budge on closing a single wasteful loophole to help reduce the deficit.”
House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio underscored the Republican position, saying Obama “got his tax hikes” on Jan. 1. Republicans agreed to raises taxes on annual household income over $450,000 as part of a deal to avoid a collision of spending cuts and tax increases dubbed the fiscal cliff. That deal also raised the Social Security payroll tax on all Americans, regardless of income.
“This discussion about revenue, in my view, is over,” Boehner said after Friday’s meeting. “It’s about taking on the spending problem here in Washington.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., vowed that he’d “not be part of any backroom deal” on the sequester and that he would “absolutely not agree to increase taxes.”
Obama and congressional Republicans did signal that they’d strive to keep the fight over sequestration separate from the next crisis: reaching an agreement to avoid a government shutdown later this month. Government funding expires March 27 and will require new budget legislation to keep many government operations running.
Boehner said the House will debate legislation soon to continue funding the government beyond the end of the month. Some Democrats and Republicans have suggested that the cuts could be restored, or at least reconsidered, during that debate.