Democratic Congressman Destroys GOP Hypocrisy On Looming Budget Cuts
By Aviva Shen on Feb 10, 2013 at 11:09 am
On ABC’s This Week Sunday morning, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) called out Tom Cole (R-OK) for his claim that President Obama is responsible for the automatic budget cuts set to go into effect if Congress cannot reach a budget deal by March. The so-called “sequester” includes steep defense cuts intended to motivate Republicans who refused to agree to any deal that included a tax increase in 2011.
When Cole tried to pin the cuts on Obama, Ellison reminded him that Cole himself voted for the Budget Control Act that created the sequester:
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As Ellison points out, Republican lawmakers brought the country to the brink of default while trying to extract devastating spending cuts from Democrats. The Budget Control Act was an eleventh hour deal to avoid an economic shutdown. Even so, the debt ceiling fight resulted in the nation’s first ever credit downgrade and $18.9 billion in wasted taxpayer dollars.
Essential government programs are already feeling the effects of the Budget Control Act; domestic spending in food safety, education, Social Security, and poverty assistance programs has plummeted to historic lows thanks to the act’s future spending caps. If Congress cannot come to an agreement by March, even more cuts will further cripple these already vulnerable programs.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/02/10/1567251/democratic-congressman-destroys-gop-hypocrisy-on-looming-budget-cuts/
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Yes, it was supported by both parties- but, ultimately, only as a means of getting the REPUBLICANS to (finally) agree to raising the debt ceiling- a crisis that REPUBLICANS unnecessarily instigated back in Spring 2011. The sequester was also only intended to kick in if the so-called bipartisan "Super Committee" failed to do their job and create a deficit-reduction plan for the rest of the Congress to vote on. The Super Committee failed, largely because REPUBLICANS continued to refuse to budge on revenue, which plagued earlier attempts at a "Grand Bargain" to get the REPUBLICANS to agree to raise the debt ceiling. Anybody seeing a pattern here? Had the Republicans decided NOT to hold the debt ceiling "hostage" and agreed to work in good faith with President Obama and the Democrats in Congress on the deficit (which shouldn't really have been THE issue during a recession), there would never have even been a sequester in the first place. Oh, and Remember President Obama crowing about getting 98% of what he wanted? Yeah, me neither............
Nobody wants the sequester. They should just get rid of it completely at this point even if nobody is in agreement on what to replace it with. Just pass a one sentence bill wiping it out of existence completely and have President Obama sign it and problem is solved.
