🚀 go-pugleaf

House Speaker John Boehner had a simple message Wednesday for 
President Obama after he used the bully pulpit to blame 
Republicans for the "meat cleaver" of looming spending cuts: You 
created it, you fix it.

"Having first proposed and demanded the sequester, it would make 
sense that the president lead the effort to replace it," Boehner 
wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

The "sequester" is the Washington word for the $85 billion in 
2013 spending cuts set to hit starting March 1, with more than 
$1 trillion in cuts on tap over the next decade. Boehner and 
Obama both agree that the federal budget needs that level of 
deficit reduction and more, but sharply disagree over how to 
achieve it. In the absence of any compromise, the set of 
indiscriminate cuts which would hit the military hardest are set 
to take hold in less than two weeks.

The president on Tuesday, surrounded by first responders who are 
among those who would see cutbacks, called on House Republicans 
to drop their resistance to tax increases and steer the country 
away from the budget "meat cleaver."

But Boehner reminded Obama that the automatic cut idea was 
originally proffered by the White House during the debt-ceiling 
talks of 2011. He said Congress "reluctantly accepted the 
president's demand" and claimed it's now up to Obama to find the 
escape hatch.

"So, as the president's outrage about the sequester grows in 
coming days, Republicans have a simple response: Mr. President, 
we agree that your sequester is bad policy. What spending are 
you willing to cut to replace it?" Boehner asked.

White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer rejected what 
he described as "revisionist history." The White House 
acknowledges the "sequester" came from their office, but argues 
that Congress was on board at the time. The original plan was to 
tee up cuts so Draconian that Congress would be compelled to 
strike a deal to replace them -- Congress, though, failed to do 
so.

While Boehner blames Democratic resistance to spending and 
entitlement cuts, Obama blames GOP resistance to closing tax 
loopholes.

"(Obama) is willing to make tough choices. Now it's time for the 
speaker to do the same. The speaker has yet to name one tax 
loophole he's willing to close. Not one," Pfeiffer said.

The back-and-forth was further evidence that the two sides are 
drifting further apart as the deadline nears, and that chances 
of a deal in the near-term are fading.

The president spoke Tuesday at the White House, urging Congress 
to come up with a short-term fix to cancel sweeping cuts to 
defense and other programs set to hit March 1.

"These cuts are not smart. They are not fair. They will hurt our 
economy. They will add hundreds of thousands of Americans to the 
unemployment rolls," Obama said. "This is not an abstraction -- 
people will lose their jobs."

The president ticked off a host of expected repercussions should 
the $85 billion in cuts for this year take effect. He said 
Border Patrol, emergency responders, FBI agents, airport 
controllers and others would all face cutbacks. He said teachers 
would be laid off by the thousands and America's military would 
be degraded.

But Congress is out for the week, effectively leaving one more 
workweek to reach a deal, or a stopgap, before the deadline.

Shortly before he spoke, Obama was also dealt a blunt warning by 
former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson, who co-chaired the 
president's deficit-reduction commission.

Simpson warned that Obama "will have a failed presidency" unless 
he deals "honestly" with entitlements, saying programs like 
Medicare and Social Security must be dealt with in order to get 
the country on a sustainable path.

"If he wants to leave it alone and not deal with those two 
biggies, forget the rest of the stuff -- he'll have a failed 
presidency," Simpson told Fox News.

While Obama says opposition to tax hikes is holding up a deal, 
Republicans say Democrats' resistance to major changes to 
entitlements are a big part of the problem.

Simpson and Erskine Bowles, the former co-chairmen of the 
president's deficit-reduction commission who for years have been 
urging Washington to stop kicking the can, got in front of the 
president early Tuesday morning to push a plan of their own.

The two fiscal hawks pitched a plan to avert the looming 
spending cuts -- heavy cuts to defense and other programs that 
they describe as "abrupt" and "mindless" -- and instead enact a 
$2.4 trillion deficit reduction plan over 10 years.

A quarter would come from changes to health care spending, a 
quarter would come from closing tax loopholes and the rest would 
come from spending reductions including a stingier adjustment of 
Social Security's cost of living increases.

On tax reform, the plan presents a middle ground -- by using the 
savings from closing loopholes to both lower rates and bring 
down the deficit. By contrast, Obama has pushed to use that 
savings mostly to reduce the deficit, while Republicans have 
pushed to use it to bring down rates.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/20/boehner-to-obama-
created-spending-cut-crisis-fix-it/

--
Are you obligated as an armed civilian, to defend unarmed 
liberals while you are both under fire by foreign agents of the 
outlaw Obama administration?

No.  Shoot the liberals immediately so they can't stab you in 
the back while you are defending yourself, then return a 
controlled rate of aimed fire.  ��

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