WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans made no progress this past week in heading off $85 billion in budget cuts that automatically start taking effect March 1.
Lacking a bipartisan deal to avoid them and hoping to heap blame and pressure on Republican lawmakers, the administration is offering vivid details about the cuts’ consequences: trimmed defense contracts, less secure U.S. embassies and furloughed air traffic controllers.
Obama is concerned about the effect that across-the-board cuts will have on the middle class, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said Sunday.
Congressional Republicans predicted the cuts would start as scheduled next month and blamed Obama not only for doing little to stop them but for the idea itself.
The cuts, called the sequester, would drain $85 billion from the government’s budget over the coming seven months. Actual cuts may be around 13 percent for defense and 9 percent for other programs because lawmakers delayed their impact, requiring savings over a shorter period of time.
Last week, the White House let loose a list of ways Americans would feel the cuts, from longer waits at airport security to as many as 13,000 teachers being laid off. Outgoing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told a congressional panel that the sequester would hollow the U.S. military because it would give the Pentagon little leeway in deciding how best to spend its money.
McDonough warned the cuts would come as the stock market is coming back, the housing market has improved and the number of jobs has grown, and urged Congress to consider a balanced approach that would further strengthen the economy and, in turn, the middle class.
“This isn’t a spending fight for us,” McDonough told NBC television’s “Meet the Press.” “This is a fight about whether we’re going to make the investments in middle-class families in this country, in education, in science and technology, in food inspection, and those kinds of things.”
Senate Democrats last week offered a plan they say is a balanced approach of more revenue and budget cuts. The White House supports the proposal, but it drew an icy reception from Republicans, who say the president got the tax increases he wanted during the agreement in early January to avoid the “fiscal cliff.” That deal increased income tax rates for the wealthiest Americans while maintaining tax cuts for the middle class enacted during President George W. Bush’s administration. It delayed the sequester from going into effect for two months.
“The question isn’t whether we’re going to insist on some position because that’s the ideologically right position,” McDonough said. “This should not be a social science experiment. This should be a question where we ask ourselves, ‘What is most important to the economy, what is most important to the middle class families of this country?’ and that’s the way the president is going to do this.”
South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham was among the Republicans on Sunday who recalled the president’s position on the sequester in the fall. “The president promised in the campaign sequestration would not happen. Now, he is allowing it to happen,” Graham said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“He’s the commander in chief, and on his watch, we’re going to begin to unravel the finest military in the history of the world at a time when we need it most,” said Graham, who is also a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “If you want to look at ways to find $1.2 trillion in savings over the next decade, let’s look at ‘Obamacare.’ Let’s don’t destroy the military and just cut blindly across the board. There are many ways to do this.” However, Graham offered no specifics.
The proposal put forth by Senate Democrats would generate revenue from plugging some tax loopholes, such as for the oil and gas industry, businesses that have sent jobs overseas and a 30 percent tax rate for millionaires.
With the March 1 deadline fast approaching, Sen. Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat and close ally of the White House, predicted that Republicans will eventually join Democrats to avoid the cuts.
“They have no choice,” Schumer said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Their arguments are untenable and don’t meet the favor of hardly anyone other than themselves and the special interests they’re protecting.”
Past administrations have seldom hesitated to spotlight how budget standoffs would wilt programs the public values.
When a budget fight between President Bill Clinton and congressional Republicans led to two government shutdowns, in 1995 and 1996, some threats came true, like padlocked national parks.
Others did not.
Clinton warned that elderly Medicare recipients might lose medical treatment, feeding programs for the low-income elderly could end and treatment at veterans’ hospitals could be curtailed. All continued, thanks to contractors working for IOUs, local governments and charities stepping in and the budget impasse ending before serious damage occurred.
This time, at stake is not a federal shutdown but a range of automatic cuts. Between March 1 and Sept. 30, the remainder of the government’s budget year, it would mean reductions of 13 percent for defense programs and 9 percent for other programs, according to the White House budget office.
The cuts, plus nearly $1 trillion more over the coming decade, were concocted two years ago. Administration and congressional bargainers purposely made them so painful that everyone would be forced to reach a grand deficit-cutting compromise to avoid them.
But that hasn’t happened.
A look at the cuts and the impact the administration says they would have, based on letters and testimony to Congress:
A key reminder: Social Security retirement payments, veterans’ benefits, the Medicare and Medicaid programs providing health care coverage to the elderly and poor, and a host of other benefit programs are exempted. The cuts take effect over a seven-month period; they don’t all crash ashore on March 1. If a bipartisan deal to ease them is reached, lawmakers could restore some or all the money retroactively.
On the other hand: Left in effect, these cuts are real even though their program-by-program impact is unclear. The law limits the administration’s flexibility to protect favored initiatives, but the White House has told agencies to avoid cuts presenting “risks to life, safety or health” and to minimize harm to crucial services.
Defense: Troops at war would be protected, but there would be fewer air force flying hours, less training for some army units and cuts in naval forces. A $3 billion cut in the military’s Tricare health care system could diminish elective care for military families and retirees. And, in a warning to the private defense industry, the Pentagon said it would be “restructuring contracts to reduce their scope and cost.”
Health: The National Institutes of Health would lose $1.6 billion, trimming cancer research and drying up funds for hundreds of other research projects. Health departments would give 424,000 fewer tests for the AIDS virus. More than 373,000 people may not receive mental health services.
Food and agriculture: About 600,000 low-income pregnant women and new mothers would lose food aid and nutrition education. Meat inspectors could be furloughed up to 15 days, shutting meat-packing plants intermittently and costing up to $10 billion in production losses.
Homeland Security: Fewer border agents and facilities for detained illegal immigrants. Reduced U.S. Coast Guard air and sea operations, furloughed Secret Service agents and weakened efforts against threats to computer networks. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief fund would lose more than $1 billion.
Education: Seventy thousand Head Start pupils would be removed from the prekindergarten program. Layoffs of 10,000 teachers and thousands of other staffers because of cuts in federal dollars that state and local governments use for schools. Cuts for programs for disabled and other special-needs students.
Transportation: Most of the Federal Aviation Administration’s 47,000 employees would face furloughs, including air traffic controllers, for an average of 11 days.
Environment: Diminished Environmental Protection Agency monitoring of oil spills, air pollution and hazardous waste. The color-coded air quality forecasting system that keeps schoolchildren and others inside on bad-air days would be curtailed or eliminated. New models of cars and trucks could take longer to reach consumers because the EPA would be able to quickly validate that they meet emissions standards.
State Department: Slow security improvements at overseas facilities, cuts in economic aid in Afghanistan and malaria control in Africa.
Internal Revenue Service: Furloughed workers would reduce the IRS’ ability to review returns, detect fraud and answer taxpayers’ questions.
FBI: Furloughs and a hiring freeze would have the equivalent impact of cutting 2,285 employees, including 775 agents. Every FBI employee would be furloughed 14 workdays.
Interior Department: Hours and service would be trimmed at all 398 national parks, and up to 128 wildlife refuges could be shuttered. Oil, gas and coal development on public lands and offshore waters would be diminished because the agency would be less able to issue permits, conduct environmental reviews and inspect facilities.
Labor: More than 3.8 million people jobless for six months or longer could see their unemployment benefits reduced by as much as 9.4 percent. Thousands of veterans would lose job counseling. Fewer Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspectors could mean 1,200 fewer visits to work sites. One million fewer people would get help finding or preparing for new jobs.
NASA: Nearly $900 million in cuts, including funds to help private companies build capsules to send astronauts to the International Space Station.
Housing: The Department of Housing and Urban Development said about 125,000 poor households could lose benefits from the agency’s Housing Choice Voucher program and risk becoming homeless.
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