The White House has announced part of the “sequester,” a
series of budget cuts totaling $1.2 trillion that (partly?) went into effect on
January 1st, 2013 that will span approximately 10 years, to be $85
billion dollars in budget cuts taking 9% from non-defense programs and 13% from
defense programs.
Program cuts include those highlights in the above image as well as 1,000 less research grants will be rewarded, cutting research and laboratories for about 12,000 scientists and students. The sequester will slow economic growth; it is projected that up to one million people will lose their jobs.
Obama has pushed Congress to delay the spending cuts by a few months in lieu of a new, comprehensive budget that couples expense cuts and tax hikes. Obama stated Saturday that the sequester could cause “thousands of Americans who work in fields like national security, education or energy are likely to be laid off…All our economic progress could be put at risk." Obama also admonished about defense cuts, stating it would “affect our ability to respond to threats in an unstable part of the world.”
A solution to this budget crisis is impeded by dissension among Democrats and Republicans. (Though, these two sources (1 , 2 ) don’t agree over whether House Republicans actually support this sequester) House Republicans want to replace defense cuts with more nondefense cuts and Democrats reject this. Republicans likewise reject Obama’s proposal for tax hikes and more targeted cuts.
Eric Cantor, the Republican House majority leader, slammed Obama Sunday with his statement “[Obama] just got his tax hike on the wealthy…Again, every time, that's his response…The House has put forward an alternative plan, and there's been no response in any serious way from the [Democratic-controlled] Senate and the White House. And it's time, we've really got to do it…The bottom line is we want tax reform…The president's not talking about that. He's talking about raising more taxes to spend.”
Should Obama go forward with his new plan? Or should he/do you think he will listen to the Republican controlled House?
1 comment:
This is the reason that we need more bipartisanship in Congress. The parties couldn't compromise on a budget, and now we have all sorts of spending cuts that lose jobs. It's the fiscal cliff all over again: partisanship leading to unfortunate results for the economy of the entire country.
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