Obama turns up heat in budget showdown

GOP keeps insisting he needs to swing ax

Despite little sign of a deal emerging with Republicans, President Barack Obama said he does not believe it is inevitable that the $85 billion in across-the board budget cuts will take effect.
Despite little sign of a deal emerging with Republicans, President Barack Obama said he does not believe it is inevitable that the $85 billion in across-the board budget cuts will take effect.

— With automatic federal budget cuts almost certain to take effect in one week, the White House and top Democrats on Friday sought to increase the pressure on congressional Republicans to agree to a compromise that could prevent disruptions in government services after March 1.

Jay Carney, President Barack Obama’s press secretary, said the administration backed a plan by Senate Democrats to enact a combination of spending cuts and tax increases that would buy time for negotiations over a larger deficit-reduction package. He called on Republicans, who say they will not accept any tax increases, to begin talks.

“We’re not seeing much interest at this point from Republican leaders in even engaging in a discussion about how we can move forward with a balanced package,” Carney said.

Speaking in the Oval Office during a meeting with visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Obama said Friday that lawmakers still have “the opportunity to make the right decisions” and avert the series of mandatory budget cuts.

Despite little sign of a deal emerging with Republicans, Obama said he does not believe it is inevitable that the $85 billion in across-the board budget cuts will take effect. He said finding a way to avert the cuts should be a “no-brainer” for congressional lawmakers.

Obama said that in contrast to earlier Washington fiscal fights, he didn’t believe the economic impact of the cuts would threaten the world financial market. But he added that if the U.S. economy slows as a result of the cuts, the global economy could suffer as well.

Obama’s statements continued an administration drum roll of warnings this week, with appeals from Cabinet members ranging from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Secretary of State John Kerry to Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

Some of the Democratic governors in the capital for their annual meeting picked up the cudgel, making arguments for Obama’s position to reporters.

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AP

Lawmakers still have “the opportunity to make the right decisions” on the budget, President Barack Obama said Friday.

Panetta last week said that the automatic cuts, known in Washington jargon as a sequester, would harm the readiness of U.S. fighting forces. And Kerry, less than a week into his new job, argued at the University of Virginia that the sequester could jeopardize America’s standing in the world.

Duncan told reporters Thursday that he is increasingly worried that deep spending cuts will harm students and teachers across the country, saying that “no one in their right mind would say this is good for kids or good for the country.”

He also said that no one would have designed the automatic budget cuts on purpose.

LaHood, a Republican who served several terms in the House, took to the podium at the White House briefing room to warn that airline and other travel is likely to be severely curtailed in the weeks ahead because of the required furlough of Federal Aviation Administration workers.

“Come together,” LaHood, a former Republican congressman from Illinois, urged Republicans and Democrats. “Talk to one another. Figure it out. That’s the way we have always done things around here.”

LaHood said he anticipated serious slowdowns in airline travel without an agreement, putting a new emphasis on a point that Democrats know could help sway public opinion.

“Flights to major cities like New York, Chicago and San Francisco and others could experience delays of up to 90 minutes during peak hours because we have fewer controllers on staff,” LaHood said. “Delays in these major airports will ripple across the country. Cuts to budgets mean preventative maintenance and quick repair of runway equipment might not be possible, which could lead to more delays. And once airlines see the potential impact of these furloughs, we expect that they will change their schedules and cancel flights.”

LaHood also said that more than 100 air-traffic control towers at small airports would be closed. “These are harmful cuts with real-world consequences that will cost jobs and hurt the economy,” LaHood said.

The Democratic governors, after meeting with Obama, said state economies would also be hurt by the cuts.

Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin, chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, said states have seen increased employment, but that their prosperity is being hindered by “the games being played by the Republicans in Congress.”

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, said Congress should reduce the budget deficit by paring back spending on Social Security and Medicare.

“Long term, there’s got to be some sort of entitlement reform,” Walker, 45, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s Political Capital With Al Hunt, airing this weekend. “You’ve still got to start tackling some of these entitlement reforms now.”

The governor said entitlement programs, such as Medicare and Social Security, are expanding the federal budget deficit. Cutting entitlements won’t hurt the economy, he said.

In other developments, a National Park Service memorandum obtained by The Associated Press contains a list of potentially adverse effects of the cuts at some of the nation’s federal parks, including Yosemite National Park, the Cape Cod National Seashore and Gettysburg. Not all 398 parks had submitted plans by the time the memorandum was written.

“We’re planning for this to happen and hoping that it doesn’t,” said park service spokesman Jeffrey Olson, who confirmed that the list is authentic.

Park service Director John Jarvis last month asked superintendents to show by Feb. 11 how they would absorb the 5 percent funding cuts. The memorandum includes some of those decisions.

In Yosemite National Park in California, for example, park administrators fear that less frequent trash pickup would potentially attract bears into campgrounds.

The U.S. Defense Department has also begun slowing payments to contractors to boost cash reserves before the automatic spending cuts take effect.

The Pentagon on Thursday revoked a policy that requires faster payments, discontinuing the practice for “all prime contractors,” according to a memorandum by Richard Ginman, director of defense procurement and acquisition policy.

The military “needs to stretch out its money as long as it can if they know it’s going to be tight,” Larry Allen, president of Allen Federal Business Partners, a consulting firm in McLean, Virginia, said in an e-mail.

The change will provide a one-time increase of several billion dollars in the Defense Department’s available cash, Maureen Schumann, a spokesman at the Pentagon, said in an e-mail.

The automatic reductions would slice about $45 billion from defense programs during the remaining seven months of the fiscal year and about $500 billion over nine years.

House Republicans say they have previously passed legislation that would replace the automatic cuts with reductions in other federal programs. They say the increase in taxes for the affluent that was agreed to at the beginning of the year was the last concession they will make on new revenue.

“The president got $600 billion in higher taxes just last month, with no spending cuts,” Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Speaker John Boehner, said after Carney’s remarks. “His appetite for tax hikes evidently knows no end. If the president really believes in ‘balance,’ it’s time to finally deal with our spending problem.”

The Senate will vote next week - probably on Wednesday - on a Democratic proposal to stave off the automatic cuts with a $110 billion deficit package that would impose a 30 percent minimum tax on income over $1 million, cut farm subsidies and slice military spending, but only after most troops have returned from Afghanistan in 2014. But even Democrats concede that the plan has no chance of clearing the 60-vote threshold that would be needed to end debate on the measure.

Information for this article was contributed by Jonathan Weisman and Jackie Calmes of The New York Times; by Julie Pace of The Associated Press; and by Brendan McGarry, Nick Taborek, Danielle Ivory and William Selway of Bloomberg News.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/23/2013

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