Boehner, WH trade blame for sequester
With just a little over a week to avert them, it appears increasingly likely the $1.2 trillion in so-called sequester cuts will go into effect. That's left House Speaker John Boehner trading blame with the White House for the stalemate.
Boehner penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Tuesday evening called, "The President Is Raging Against a Budget Crisis He Created." He blasted President Obama for publicly shaming Republicans for failing to avert t
he sequester. Mr. Obama yesterday said that "Republicans have a choice" between putting the economy at risk, for the sake of protecting special interests, and compromising to protect investments in things like health care and national security.
Sequester cuts would be a "catastrophe" for DOD civilians
However, in his op-ed, Boehner charged that the public "might not realize from Mr. Obama's statements is that [the sequester] is a product of the president's own failed leadership."
The $1.2 trillion sequester cuts, which were initially set to kick in on Jan. 1, emerged out of Congress' 2011 budget negotiations. Congress agreed that if a congressional "supercommittee" couldn't come up with an acceptable deficit reduction plan, Congress would just slash $1.2 trillion from the budget over 10 years -- half coming from defense spending and half from non-defense. Nearly everyone in Washington agrees that indiscriminately slashing $1.2 trillion would damage the economy, but lawmakers can't agree on a deficit reduction package with which to replace the cuts.
Given the economic damage the sequester would inflict, Congress this year stalled the cuts for two months -- which is why they're set to go into effect in March. Unless Congress acts in the next week and a half, $85 billion in across-the-board cuts will kick in this year.
Boehner argues, "There is nothing wrong with cutting spending that much--we should be cutting even more--but the sequester is an ugly and dangerous way to do it."
March budget cuts: "Everybody loses"
Boehner also blamed Mr. Obama for insisting on inserting the "sequester" plan into the 2011 budget deal. Originally, the speaker said Congress wanted a plan to stop debt limit increases if the "supercommittee" failed. "But President Obama," Boehner charged, "was determined not to face another debt-limit increase before his re-election campaign. Having just blown up one deal, the president scuttled this bipartisan, bicameral agreement. His solution? A sequester."
Boehner said that Republicans are unwilling to agree to any more tax hikes in any plan to avert the sequester. "Mr. President, we agree that your sequester is bad policy," he wrote. "What spending are you willing to cut to replace it?"
The White House was quick to respond, with White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer calling Boehner's op-ed "an amazing act of revisionist history."
In a White House blog post, Pfeiffer notes said, "it was the Speaker who praised the sequester at the time." He notes that Boehner, in a 2011 interview with CBS News, said of the budget deal, "When you look at this final agreement that we came to with the White House, I got 98 percent of what I wanted. I'm pretty happy."
He also noted that the 2011 deal passed in the GOP-led House of Representatives with the support of 174 Republicans, including Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.
Pfeiffer points out that both Mr. Obama and congressional Democrats have put forward plans to avert the sequester and blasted Republicans for their resolute objections to closing any tax loopholes. He challed congressional Republicans to vote once more on the legislation the GOP passed last year to avert the sequester.
"Where is the Republican plan? The GOP bill expired," he wrote. "If they're confident the draconian cuts will win support in Congress and more importantly - with the American people -- they should bring it up for a vote."
Popular in Politics
- Michelle Obama decries "slander" that educated blacks are "trying to act white" Play Video
- Va. GOP candidate: Planned Parenthood "more lethal" for blacks than KKK 693 Comments
- Top Obama officials knew about IRS probe, says WH
- Immigration bill would require fingerprinting at 30 airports
- IRS scandal highlights leadership vacancies
- Republicans continue beating Benghazi drum 479 Comments
- Adviser on White House scandals: "Partisan fishing expeditions" won't distract Obama
- Burma or Myanmar? WH grappling with name game
You are correct things do evolve. I suppose you know about part-time people losing their healthcare insurance because of your dumba$$ president and his welfare laws? Now where do you think they are going to get health insurance? Right! Medicaid! And do you also know that the Medicaid system is even MORE screwed up then Medicare?
Evolve - my a$$. Ya gotta get beyond chimp stage to see obamacare as anything but a financial disaster. And I'd like to point out another goodie of obamacare - perhaps you're dumb enough to think that a federal civil servant is better educated or more intelligent then a doctor but I prefer the doctor's diagnosis and treatment to a socialistic one.
"Seriously you are going to compare the state with the best weather, scenery, restaurants, food, sport teams, schools and places to work with large amounts of educated and enlightened people to the wasteland of North Dakota? Not to mention that the median income and average salary in CA is much higher? Seriously"?
----------------------------
SMOKEY_75 replies: "If is so great why is bankrupt"?
----------------------------
Simple.....Proposition 13 from 1978, which has lowered state revenue by over $500 billion.
Same old GOP speakers, spewing the same old rhetoric without any new or fresh ideas, and basically always talking about what they are against.
Unfortunately their rhetoric, policies and messaging are very tired and dated!
Where do you get your partisan mis-information? Is it rush limbaugh or beck?
California's current "conventional" oil production is the third largest in the nation, behind only texass and north dakota, producing 524,000 barrels of oil a day according to the EIA. California also ranks third in refining capacity, able to churn out 2 million barrels per day out of its 20 operable refineries.
They've been pumping OIL in California for decades, so stop your far-right propaganda and mis-information!
Seriously you are going to compare the state with the best weather, scenery, restaurants, food, sport teams, schools and places to work with large amounts of educated and enlightened people to the wasteland of North Dakota? Not to mention that the median income and average salary in CA is much higher? Seriously?
A guy I know just bought a seven bedroom house and five aces to live on and paid about $200K for it. A house like that in California at least 10 times that number. No smog, no gang warfare, murders in LA 2012 "205", Bismark ND "<1"..... ROFLMAO
Yep you are living the dream, dream on....
SMOKEY_75 replies: "Outback you rail about coorporate welfare every day on here. (Which really isn;t welfare it is just tax incentives that allow business to keep teh money they have earned)".
LOL! So you "free trade" republicans are still protecting BIG OIL subsidies they've gotten for 100+ years, and afraid to call it the CORPORATE WELFARE it is!
Call it what you like, but a fossil fuel subsidy is any government action that lowers the cost of fossil fuel energy production, raises the price received by energy producers or lowers the price paid by energy consumers. There are a lot of activities under this simple definition -- tax breaks and giveaways, but also loans at favorable rates, price controls, purchase requirements and a whole lot of other things.
In the United States, credible estimates of annual fossil fuel subsidies range from $10 billion to $52 billion annually, while even efforts to remove small portions of those subsidies have been defeated in Congress, mostly by republicans.
Where do you get your partisan mis-information? Is it rush limbaugh or beck?
California could be the next oil boom state, since it is sitting on a massive amount of shale oil running from Los Angeles to San Francisco. California's Monterey Shale is thought to contain more oil than North Dakota's Bakken and Texas's Eagle Ford - thought to hold over 400 billion barrels of oil, according to IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates.
California's current "conventional" oil production is the third largest in the nation, behind only texass and north dakota, producing 524,000 barrels of oil a day according to the EIA. California also ranks third in refining capacity, able to churn out 2 million barrels per day out of its 20 operable refineries.
So GO FISH, and stop spewing your NEOCON propaganda and mis-information!
Read more: http://www.automobilemag.com/features/awards/1301_2013_automobile_of_the_year_tesla_model_s/viewall.html#ixzz2LZbNF1JA
Of course Tesla also makes the much more sporty Tesla Roadster, 0-60mph in 3.7 seconds, 245 miles per charge, making your little sedan appear to be standing still!