By Nick Mann | 26 February 2013
US President Barack Obama has told Congress that ‘just a little bit of compromise’ is needed to avoid the $85bn of automatic spending cuts due to take effect on Friday.
The cuts will be made unless Democrats and Republicans in Congress can agree a new deficit reduction plan before March 1. The president told a meeting of US state governors yesterday that Democrats needed to accept ‘modest reforms’ in Medicare, while Republicans had to accept tax reform that would eliminate ‘wasteful’ tax loopholes but not increase tax rates.
‘These cuts do not have to happen,’ Obama said. ‘Congress can turn them off any time with just a little bit of compromise.’
But the leader of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, John Boehner, said his party would not agree to a deal without ‘smarter cuts’.
Boehner also criticised Obama for campaigning to avoid the sequester instead of encouraging negotiations. ‘The president proposed the sequester, yet he’s far more interested in holding campaign rallies than he is in urging his Senate Democrats to actually pass a plan’.
He added:‘The president says we have to have another tax increase in order to avoid the sequester. Well, Mr President, you got your tax increase. It’s time to cut spending here in Washington.’
Over the weekend, the White House published a breakdown of the effects the sequester would have. These included cutting support programmes for more than 1.2 million disadvantaged students and putting more than 30,000 teacher and school staff jobs at risk.
But the Republican governor of Louisiana, Bobbie Jindal, claimed that that it was possible to achieve the spending cuts required to avoid the sequester without the ‘devastating consequences’ detailed by the president’s officials.
‘Now is the time to cut spending. It can be done without jeopardising the economy. It can be done without jeopardising critical services,’ he said. The president needs to stop campaigning, stop trying to scare the American people, stop trying to scare the states.’
