Sequester cuts hit home for RepublicansThe looming across-the-board budget cuts that could put scores of Americans out of work next year are all President Barack Obama’s fault.
That’s according to congressional Republicans — the majority of whom voted for the deal that laid the groundwork for the cuts in the first place.
But Republicans who backed the sequester arrangement then aren’t making any apologies now. Staving off the catastrophic sequester cuts is on Obama and Senate Democrats, they say — even if they knew the developing standoff was a distinct possibility when they signed off on the sequester deal. It may have seemed like a fine idea at the time, but now that the reality of steep cuts to the military are coming into focus, Republican lawmakers don’t like what they see.
Rep. Buck McKeon, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and one of the most outspoken critics of the automatic defense cuts, is one of the few members to admit he now regrets voting for the Budget Control Act.
The California Republican “was assured by his leadership that the cuts won’t happen,” said his spokesman, Claude Chafin. Still, Chafin said, it’s the Democrats — and not GOP leaders — who are solely to blame.
“What [McKeon] regrets — and I think what everybody regrets — is that when they voted for the Budget Control Act, the deal was that the other side, the president and Senate Democrats, would be honest brokers in negotiations,” Chafin added. “That never came to fruition.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) wouldn’t go so far as to say she regretted her vote but certainly didn’t like the situation Congress has now found itself in.
“I was assured by leadership that when I agreed to vote for the Budget Control Act — which I did to prevent our country from defaulting on its obligations — that sequestration would never happen, that it was such a dire remedy that it would force the supercommittee to act, and obviously that proved not to be true,” Collins said. “Whether I would have voted the same way now, who knows, but I was very concerned about preventing a default.”
With no solution in sight, the blame game on both sides of the Capitol has kicked into high gear.
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said it’s fair to pin the current situation on Democrats because he argues the supercommittee’s failure was their fault. He voted for the Budget Control Act because he firmly believed the supercommittee would come up with $1.2 trillion in spending cuts.
“I knew how difficult sequestration would be, and I ended up supporting the overall budget deal,” said Kyl, who served on the supercommittee. “I couldn’t conceive of people being so pig-headed, so stubborn, so willing to see our economy go up in flames as apparently our Democratic friends are willing to be. I knew it would be political, but I didn’t think they would literally shoot the hostage.”
Across the Capitol, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer charged that Republicans are trying to “have it both ways” on the defense cuts. He said Democrats wanted a clean vote on increasing the debt limit but Republicans had insisted on imposing “a fiscal discipline.” Ninety-five Democrats joined 174 Republicans to pass the law in the House.
“They imposed a fiscal discipline, and now they don’t want to live with the fiscal discipline, so yes, now they want to have it both ways,” said Hoyer (D-Md.). “Their observation that sequestration will have a detrimental effect on defense is correct. … It will also have a detrimental effect on Medicare.”
Hoyer indicated that congressional Democrats would be willing to replace the sequester cuts if Congress could come up with a “bold, balanced plan.”
“I think we can do that if the Republicans don’t walk away, as they have in the past, from reaching an agreement,” he said.
