Wednesday, February 20, 2013

John Boehner: The President Is Raging Against a Budget Crisis He Created

Obama invented the 'sequester' in the summer of 2011 to avoid facing up to America's spending problem. - John Boehner/Wall St. Journal

A week from now, a dramatic new federal policy is set to go into effect that threatens U.S. national security, thousands of jobs and more. In a bit of irony, President Obama stood Tuesday with first responders who could lose their jobs if the policy goes into effect. Most Americans are just hearing about this Washington creation for the first time: the sequester. What they might not realize from Mr. Obama's statements is that it is a product of the president's own failed leadership.

The sequester is a wave of deep spending cuts scheduled to hit on March 1. Unless Congress acts, $85 billion in across-the-board cuts will occur this year, with another $1.1 trillion coming over the next decade. 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.... read the rest at the link.

President Obama ramps up scare over looming budget cuts - Brian Hughes/Washington Examiner @BrianHughesDC

Analysts said the White House push to raise public fears over the budget cuts may leave many Americans feeling like they've heard it all before, that it's just one more dire warning from a president who regularly takes his case to the public to pressure Congress to act.

"It's like the boy who cried wolf," Mitchell McKinney, a political communication professor at the University of Missouri, said of Obama's message. "It loses its impact because we've heard it all before. We've had the [debt] ceiling, the [fiscal] cliff -- the ire from the public isn't there."

White House officials said Obama will step up his travels promoting his package of short-term spending cuts and tax increases, hoping to raise awareness of a largely esoteric issue.

The GOP’s astonishingly bad message on sequester cuts - Byron York/Washington Examiner @ByronYork

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner describes the upcoming sequester as a policy “that threatens U.S. national security, thousands of jobs and more.”

Which leads to the question: Why would Republicans support a measure that threatens national security and thousands of jobs? Boehner and the GOP are determined to allow the $1.2 trillion sequester go into effect unless President Obama and Democrats agree to replacement cuts, of an equal amount, that target entitlement spending. If that doesn’t happen — and it seems entirely unlikely — the sequester goes into effect, with the GOP’s blessing.

In addition, Boehner calls the cuts “deep,” when most conservatives emphasize that for the next year they amount to about $85 billion out of a $3,600 billion budget. Which leads to another question: Why would Boehner adopt the Democratic description of the cuts as “deep” when they would touch such a relatively small part of federal spending?

The effect of Boehner’s argument is to make Obama seem reasonable in comparison....

Could the GOP message on the sequester be any more self-defeating? Boehner could argue that the sequester cuts are necessary as a first — and somewhat modest — step toward controlling the deficits that threaten the economy. Instead, he describes them as a threat to national security and jobs that he nevertheless supports. It’s not an argument that is likely to persuade millions of Americans.

Wednesday morning, when Boehner’s op-ed appeared, I sent questions along these lines to Boehner’s office. Spokesman Michael Steel replied, “We support replacing the indiscriminate cuts in the sequester with smarter cuts and reforms (of an equal amount). That’s what we did with the sequester replacement bills written by Chairman Ryan that we passed last year.” Another spokesman, Brendan Buck, added that “it is not the amount of the cuts…it’s where they fall — disproportionately on accounts important to our national security.”

None of which addresses the Republican problem on the sequester. If the problem is one of substance — that is, if GOP leaders truly believe the cuts threaten national security but are nevertheless supporting them — then Republicans have put themselves into an untenable situation.

Boehner, WSJ Lash Out at Obama over Sequester - Lisa Barron/Newsmax

in a scathing Wall Street Journal op-ed, Boehner pointed the finger firmly at the president as being responsible for getting the country “in this mess.”

“During the summer of 2011, as Washington worked toward a plan to reduce the deficit to allow for an increase in the federal debt limit, President Obama and I very nearly came to a historic agreement,” writes Boehner. “Unfortunately, our deal fell apart at the last minute when the president demanded an extra $400 billion in new tax revenue —50% more than we had shaken hands on just days before. “

Boehner says that despite the “disappointing decision” by the president, the speaker immediately got together with Senate leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell to forge a bipartisan plan calling for immediate caps on discretionary spending and the creation of a special “super committee” to find an additional $1.2 trillion in savings.

“The deal also included a simple but powerful mechanism to ensure that the committee met its deficit-reduction target. If it didn’t, the debt limit would not be increased again in a few months,” he adds.

“But President Obama was determined not to face another debt-limit increase before his re-election campaign. Having just blow up one deal, the president scuttled this bipartisan, bicameral agreement. His solution? A sequester.”

The sequester was initially proposed as a deal so bad that Republicans and Democrats would have to come up with something better. But as deadlines have passed, neither side has provided an alternative that is acceptable to the other.

Boehner says that with a deadline looming, both parties in Congress “reluctantly accept the president’s demand for the sequester” and a revised version of the bipartisan plan.

Sequestration Depression - Matt Purple/American Spectator

Hate the Sequester? Then Pass Entitlement Reform. - Jim Geraghty/National Review via Conservative Byte