All condemn pending budget cuts, spread blame

PHILIP ELLIOTT

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — The White House and Repub­li­cans kept up the unre­lent­ing mud­sling­ing Sun­day over who’s to blame for roundly con­demned bud­get cuts set to take effect at week’s end, with the admin­is­tra­tion detail­ing the poten­tial fall­out in each state and gov­er­nors wor­ry­ing about the mess.

But as lead­ers rushed past each other to decry the poten­tially dev­as­tat­ing and seem­ingly inevitable cuts, they also crit­i­cized their coun­ter­parts for their roles in intro­duc­ing, imple­ment­ing and obstruct­ing the $85 bil­lion bud­get mech­a­nism that could affect every­thing from com­mer­cial flights to class­rooms to meat inspec­tions. The GOP’s lead­ing line of crit­i­cism hinged on blam­ing Obama’s aides for intro­duc­ing the bud­get trig­ger in the first place, while the administration’s allies were deter­mined to illus­trate the con­se­quences of the cuts as the prod­uct of Repub­li­can stubbornness.

For­mer Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee chair­man Haley Bar­bour, aware the polit­i­cal out­come may be pred­i­cated on who is to blame, half-jokingly said Sun­day: “Well, if it was a bad idea, it was the president’s idea.”

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said there was lit­tle hope to dodge the cuts “unless the Repub­li­cans are will­ing to com­pro­mise and do a bal­anced approach.”

No so fast, Repub­li­cans interjected.

“I think the Amer­i­can peo­ple are tired of the blame game,” said Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H.

Yet just a moment before, she was blam­ing Obama for putting the coun­try on the brink of mas­sive spend­ing cuts that were ini­tially designed to be so unac­cept­able that Con­gress would strike a grand bar­gain to avoid them.

Obama nod­ded to the squab­ble dur­ing his weekly radio and Inter­net address.

“Unfor­tu­nately, it appears that Repub­li­cans in Con­gress have decided that instead of com­pro­mis­ing — instead of ask­ing any­thing of the wealth­i­est Amer­i­cans — they would rather let these cuts fall squarely on the mid­dle class,” Obama said on Sat­ur­day, in his last weekly address before the dead­line but unlikely to be his final word on the subject.

“We just need Repub­li­cans in Wash­ing­ton to come around,” Obama added. “Because we need their help to fin­ish the job of reduc­ing our deficit in a smart way that doesn’t hurt our econ­omy or our people.”

With Friday’s dead­line near­ing, few in the nation’s cap­i­tal were opti­mistic that a real­is­tic alter­na­tive could be found and all sought to cast the polit­i­cal process itself as the cul­prit. If Con­gress does not step in, a top-to-bottom series of cuts will be spread across domes­tic and defense agen­cies in a way that would fun­da­men­tally change how gov­ern­ment serves its people.

Obama senior adviser Dan Pfeif­fer told reporters that the GOP is “so focused on not giv­ing the pres­i­dent another win” that they will cost thou­sands of jobs. To back up their point, the White House released state-by-state tal­lies for how many dol­lars and jobs the bud­get cuts would mean to each state.

“The Repub­li­cans are mak­ing a pol­icy choice that these cuts are bet­ter than elim­i­nat­ing loop­holes,” Pfeif­fer said.

And, yes, those cuts will hurt. The cuts would slash from domes­tic and defense spend­ing alike, lead­ing to fur­loughs for hun­dreds of thou­sands of gov­ern­ment work­ers and contractors.

Defense Sec­re­tary Leon Panetta has said the cuts would harm the readi­ness of U.S. fight­ing forces. Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Ray LaHood said trav­el­ers could see delayed flights. Edu­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Arne Dun­can said 70,000 fewer chil­dren from low-income fam­i­lies would have access to Head Start pro­grams. And fur­loughed meat inspec­tors could leave plants idled.

In Vir­ginia, for instance, 90,000 Defense Depart­ment civil­ian employ­ees could be fur­loughed, includ­ing nurses at Army hos­pi­tals, said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. He also said ship-repair con­trac­tors could lay off 300 of their 450 employees.

“There is no rea­son that this has to hap­pen. We just need to find a bal­anced approach,” Kaine said.

White House offi­cials also pointed to Ohio as another state that would be hit hard: $25.1 mil­lion in edu­ca­tion spend­ing and another $22 mil­lion for stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties. Some 2,500 chil­dren from low-income fam­i­lies would also be removed from Head Start programs.

Offi­cials also said their analy­sis showed Ken­tucky would lose $93,000 in fed­eral fund­ing for a domes­tic abuse pro­gram, mean­ing 400 fewer vic­tims being served in Sen­a­tor Minor­ity Leader Mitch McConnell’s home state. Geor­gia, mean­while, would face a $286,000 bud­get cut to its children’s health pro­grams, mean­ing almost 4,200 fewer chil­dren would receive vac­ci­na­tions against measles and whoop­ing cough.

White House offi­cials said Nevada would face mil­i­tary fur­loughs total­ing $12.1 mil­lion in reduced pay, a $424,000 cut to pay for meals for seniors and an almost $2 mil­lion reduc­tion for clean air and water programs.

The White House was ready with state-by-state reports designed to get hold-out law­mak­ers to com­pro­mise or face unhappy constituents.

The White House com­piled the num­bers from fed­eral agen­cies and its own bud­get office. The num­bers are based only on the $85 bil­lion in cuts for this fis­cal year, from March to Sep­tem­ber, that are set to take effect Friday.

As to whether states could move money around to cover short­falls, the White House said that depends on state bud­get struc­tures and the spe­cific pro­grams. The White House did not have a list of which states or pro­grams might have flexibility.

Some gov­er­nors said the impasse was just the lat­est cri­sis in Wash­ing­ton that is keep­ing busi­nesses from hir­ing and under­min­ing the abil­ity of state lead­ers to develop their own spend­ing plans.

“It’s sense­less and it doesn’t need to hap­pen,” said Gov. Mar­tin O’Malley, D-Md., dur­ing the annual meet­ing of the National Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion this weekend.

“And it’s a damn shame, because we’ve actu­ally had the fastest rate of jobs recov­ery of any state in our region. And this really threat­ens to hurt a lot of fam­i­lies in our state and kind of flat line our job growth for the next sev­eral months,” O’Malley said.

The bud­get cuts were all but cer­tain to come up when Obama dines with the gov­er­nors Sun­day evening at the White House. But time is run­ning out and hope is waning.

Sug­ges­tions intended to instill a spirit of com­pro­mise included bring­ing all sides to the bar­gain­ing table, where they could act like “adults,” a pres­i­den­tial sum­mit at Camp David and even a field trip to watch “Lin­coln.” Yet none of those options was on the books.

Con­necti­cut Gov. Dan Mal­loy said it is past time for both sides to sit down to help dodge cuts that will hurt all states’ budgets.

“Come to the table, every­one. Every­body. Let’s work this thing out. Let’s be adults,” said Mal­loy, a Democrat.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called those defense cuts “uncon­scionable” and urged Obama to call law­mak­ers to the White House or the pres­i­den­tial retreat of Camp David for a last-minute bud­get summit.

“I won’t put all the blame all on the pres­i­dent of the United States. But the pres­i­dent leads. The pres­i­dent should be call­ing us over some­where — Camp David, the White House, some­where — and us sit­ting down and try­ing to avert these cuts,” McCain said.

LaHood, who served as a Repub­li­can rep­re­sent­ing Illi­nois in the U.S. House, urged his col­leagues to watch Steven Spielberg’s film about Pres­i­dent Abra­ham Lincoln’s polit­i­cal skills.

“Every­body around here ought to go take a look at the ‘Lin­coln’ movie, where they did very hard things by work­ing together, talk­ing together and com­pro­mis­ing,” said LaHood. “That’s what’s needed here.”

LaHood and Dun­can were the only rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the admin­is­tra­tion to appear on Sun­day shows. The White House did not book any of its senior aides.

Bar­bour, Mal­loy and McCain appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union.” McCaskill was inter­viewed on “Fox News Sun­day.” Ayotte, Dun­can and Kaine spoke with CBS’ “Face the Nation.” LaHood appeared on both CNN and NBC.

Posted by AP News on Feb 24 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.