No state will go unscathed, Obama warns

Fight cuts, governors told

President Barack Obama addresses the National Governors Association, including Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe (on Obama’s right), in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington on Monday.

President Barack Obama addresses the National Governors Association, including Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe (on Obama’s right), in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington on Monday.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

— President Barack Obama urged the nation’s governors to pressure Congress for a deal to avoid automatic spending cuts scheduled to begin Friday, telling them the impact would be felt in every state.

With the National Governors Association meeting in Washington, the White House distributed a state by-state list of programs, including defense, education and public health, that would be affected by the across-the board reduction of $85 billion in this fiscal year.

“These impacts will not be all felt on day one, but rest assured the uncertainty is already having an effect,” Obama told the governors gathered at the White House as part of their annual meeting. “While you are in town I hope that you speak with your congressional delegation and remind them in no uncertain terms exactly what is at stake.”

“Companies are preparing layoff notices. Families are preparing to cut back on expenses. The longer these cuts are in place, the bigger the impact will become,” he said.

The across-the-board cuts, known as sequestration, would shrink federal spending by $85 billion for fiscal 2013, which ends Sept. 30, and total $1.2 trillion over nine years, out of an annual federal budget of about $4 trillion. Congress mandated the reductions as part of a 2011 deal to increase the U.S. debt limit.They would be split almost evenly between defense and nondefense spending. The budget-cutting mechanism could affect everything from commercial flights to classrooms to meat inspections. Furloughs are expected for hundreds of thousands of government workers and contractors.

photo

AP

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, is accompanied by fellow members of the House GOP leadership (from left) Rep. Lynn Jenkins of Kansas, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Va., Rep. Virginia Foxx of N.C., and Rep. James Lankford of Oklahoma, as Boehner responds to President Barack Obama’s remarks to the nation’s governors Monday about how to fend off the impending automatic budget cuts on Capitol Hill in Washington.

The White House and congressional Republicans are trading blame for the impasse on the automatic cuts. Obama’s advisers said Sunday they don’t expect to head off the reductions before the deadline.

“Our hope is that we’ll be able to come to a solution,” Dan Pfeiffer, a senior Obama adviser, said Sunday in a conference call with reporters. “But there seems to be nothing the Republicans are saying right now on Sunday to suggest that by Friday they’re going to change their position.”

House Speaker John Boehner’s spokesman, Michael Steel, put the blame on the administration. “The White House needs to spend less time explaining to the press how bad the sequester will be and more time actually working to stop it,” the Republican said.


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Despite the urgent rhetoric, there was no indication the White House and congressional Republicans were actively negotiating a deal to avoid the so-called sequester ahead of the end of the week deadline. The last known conversation between Obama and GOP leaders was last week and there have been no in-person meetings between the parties this year.

With Congress back from a week long recess, House Speaker John Boehner showed little willingness to move off his long-held position that the sequester be offset through targeted spending cuts, not the package of cuts and tax increases Obama supports.

“Mr. President, you got your tax increase,” Boehner said, referring to the tax rate increases that took effect on Jan. 1. “It’s time to cut spending here in Washington.”

If the impasse drags on, the Congressional Budget Office has warned that reduced federal spending may lower the gross domestic product and cost 750,000 jobs by the end of 2013. The U.S. economy shrank in the fourth quarter, its worst performance since the 2009 second quarter, when the world’s largest economy was in recession, according to Commerce Department figures.

On Monday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said visiting hours would be cut at all 398 national parks, just as they prepare for an influx of spring and summer visitors. Salazar said the cuts will reduce the park service’s budget by $112 million.

Also, the federal government released groups of illegal aliens from custody across the country Monday. U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement confirmed the release but would not say how many or from which detention centers.

“In order to make the best use of our limited detention resources in the current fiscal climate and to manage our detention population under current congressionally mandated levels, ICE has directed field offices to review the detained population to ensure it is in line with available funding,” said ICE spokesman Gillian Christensen. “As a result of this review, a number of detained aliens have been released around the country and placed on an appropriate, more cost-effective form of supervised release.”

Christensen said ICE is continuing to prosecute their cases in immigration court and will seek their deportation.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood already has warned of delays at major airports as the Federal Aviation Administration makes air traffic controllers take unpaid time off. Towers at some smaller airports may be closed.

Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano said Monday the wait at security-screening checkpoints may lengthen to four hours at major airports and trucks and ships would be delayed at U.S. ports, disrupting international trade. She said the department’s various security functions would be diminished.

“I’m not here to scare people, I’m here to inform,” Napolitano said at the daily White House briefing. “I don’t think we can maintain the same level of security at all places around the country with sequester.”

The automatic spending cuts “will have macroeconomic consequences, cost hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country and jobs throughout the private sector,” said Jason Furman, the principal deputy director on the president’s National Economic Council.

The impact would be especially visible in states where federal spending is higher, including Maryland and Virginia, which have numerous federal facilities. In a Feb. 18 letter to Obama, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, said the reductions may force his state into a recession.

Obama will seek to build public support for his sequester offset plan today when he travels to Newport News, Va.

Republicans have faulted the president and the Democratic-controlled Senate for not acting on an alternative to replace the cuts, while continuing to needle the White House for originally suggesting the concept of sequestration in a deal to raise the debt ceiling in 2011.

“Considering the House has twice passed legislation to avoid the sequester, you would think White House would be focused on getting the Senate to pass a plan that would do the same instead of creating more PR stunts,” Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer said in an e-mailed statement.

Over the weekend, both Republican and Democratic governors said that while the federal government must reduce its budget deficit, the across-the-board spending cuts would deal an unnecessary blow to still-recovering state economies.

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, a Republican, said he was most concerned about how the defense cuts could affect his state, from the aerospace industry to shipyards. About 9,000 civilians who work for the Defense Department in Mississippi may be forced to take unpaid time off, ship purchases may be delayed, and a planned demolition at Mississippi’s Naval Air Station Meridian could be scrapped, according to the White House.

“These are real jobs and real families,” Bryant said in an interview. “The president needs to stop holding campaign rallies and get this thing done.”

Vice President Joe Biden told governors gathered at the White House for an annual meeting Monday that they’re more disciplined than Congress. He chided Washington lawmakers, asserting that they are preventing a solution to the automatic spending cuts.

He says people may disagree on solutions, but everyone agrees the so-called sequester should be addressed.

Information for this article was contributed by Hans Nichols, William Selway, Lisa Lerer, Rita Nazareth and Jim Snyder of Bloomberg News; by Matthew Daly, Josh Lederman, Julie Pace, Ken Thomas and Steve Peoples of The Associated Press; and by Franco Ordonez of McClatchy Newspapers.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/26/2013