Cuts a given, leaders will meet

Republicans expect little from Friday session at White House

President Barack Obama, left, and House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio sit during a ceremony to dedicate a statue of civil rights icon Rosa Parks, Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013, in the Capitol's Statuary Hall.  (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

President Barack Obama, left, and House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio sit during a ceremony to dedicate a statue of civil rights icon Rosa Parks, Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013, in the Capitol's Statuary Hall. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Thursday, February 28, 2013

— President Barack Obama summoned congressional leaders to a meeting at the White House on Friday, the day $85 billion in spending cuts begin, as both parties say a deal to avert them probably won’t come before the deadline.

Republicans John Boehner, the House speaker, and Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, and Democrats Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, and Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, will attend the meeting.

The timing signals that Obama probably won’t spend much effort seeking to prevent the cuts before they begin. Instead, Democrats say they expect the public to blame Republicans.

The parties are far apart on how to replace the cuts that total $1.2 trillion over nine years, with $85 billion in the remaining seven months of this fiscal year. Democrats insist tax increases must be part of a replacement plan,an approach Republican leaders oppose.

“One thing Americans simply will not accept is another tax increase to replace spending reductions we already agreed to,” McConnell said in an e-mailed statement. He said the meeting “is an opportunity for us to visit with the president about how we can all keep our commitment to reduce Washington spending.”

Boehner told fellow House Republicans during a closed caucus that he considers the meeting a “listening session,” and the he doesn’t intend to negotiate, said Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia.Leaders didn’t discuss any new strategy to avoid the spending cuts or a possibility of taking up a Senate measure, Westmoreland said.

“I certainly don’t believe that the Senate is going to come up with something,” Westmoreland said in an interview.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the president anticipates a “constructive conversation” with congressional leaders, though he said it’s unlikely the session would avert the cuts. Obama remains unwilling to consider a proposal that doesn’t couple cuts with tax increases, Carney said.

Obama has until 10:59 p.m. Central time Friday to issue an order officially putting the cuts into effect.

Pelosi said in a statement that Democrats will press for “a balanced, bipartisan solution to avoid the unemployment and economic uncertainty” the cuts would cause.

Boehner told House Republicans on Wednesday that the chamber will probably take up a separate bill next week to fund the federal government through September, said Rep. Bill Young, a Florida Republican who leads the defense appropriations subcommittee. Current funding runs out March 27.

Young said the funding measure would take the spending cuts into account while giving the Defense Department some flexibility in allocating money to pay for operations.

“There was not one dissent” to the plan presented by House leaders, said Louisiana Republican John Fleming.

The White House session follows a meeting there Tuesday between Obama and Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Mc-Cain and Graham said they discussed the spending cuts with the president, though they didn’t give details.

The two senators have said they may be open to replacing the automatic reductions with a plan that includes new tax revenue and cuts in entitlement programs.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Wednesday that he expects Congress and the White House to reach a deal to avert the cuts, or at least diminish them.

“People wait until the last minute. That’s when they focus, that’s when it’s easier to do it politically,” Bloomberg told reporters at the White House, where he met with the president about stopping gun violence.

Senate leaders are working to schedule votes today on each party’s preferred replacement option. Neither plan is expected to advance.

The next step for Senate Democrats may be to try to gain support from a handful of Republicans for a broader, multiyear proposal that includes new revenue, said Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson.

Senate Democrats propose replacing this year’s part of the reductions with a smaller defense spending cut, a halt in direct payments to farmers, and a tax increase that would impose a minimum 30 percent rate on top earners.

The tax provision is known as the Buffett rule, after one of its leading proponents, billionaire Warren Buffett, and would apply fully to annual income exceeding $5 million.

Senate Republicans may offer an alternative plan that would give the president flexibility to cut the required amount of spending at federal agencies. McConnell said Tuesday that Republicans are discussing alternatives and that he may seek a vote on more than one proposal.

Boehner on Tuesday said the House won’t act to replace automatic federal spending cuts until the Senate “gets off their ass” and passes a plan.

Reid on Wednesday described Boehner’s claim that the Senate was sitting on the sidelines as “really weak sauce” because the chamber plans to vote before Friday.

“Republicans refuse to compromise on a balanced plan to avoid harsh austerity measures,” Reid said on the Senate floor.

Administration officials have said the across-the-board cuts will lead to forced days off for government workers and may affect commercial airline flights and functions such as border security.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan warned that his agency and local education officials would have to cut after-school programs, services for special-needs and poor children, and the jobs of as many as 40,000 teachers and aides.

Some Republicans say their party runs more risk of being blamed for the automatic spending cuts than Obama. Many Republicans who won office in the past three elections have shown a “puritanical” approach to politics that forbids compromise, Republican Rep. Peter King of New York said Wednesday.

“The way it looks now, it’s the Republicans that get blamed,” King said at a Bloomberg Government breakfast.

Still, he said, the automatic spending cuts may provide Obama and Congress with an opportunity to reach a broader deal on reducing entitlement expenditures, raising revenue and extending the government’s borrowing limit.

Federal employee labor unions are trying to soften the blow for more than 1 million government workers who may be forced to take unpaid time off if mandatory budget cuts kick in this week.

Union leaders have been working furiously to persuade agency managers to make other cuts that won’t affect employee paychecks. But if agencies do insist on furloughs, unions say they can bargain over when they take place and other terms that could help workers infinancial trouble.

“We plan to exercise those rights,” said Jacqueline Simon, public-policy director at the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 650,000 workers.

Meanwhile, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee wants to give the Pentagon more leeway in apportioning the automatic budget cuts.

Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma will introduce this week a measure that would let military service chiefs move around funds within the Pentagon’s budget this fiscal year, according to his spokesman, Donelle Harder.

Information for this article was contributed by Roxana Tiron, James Rowley, Cheyenne Hopkins, Lisa Lerer, Laura Litvan and Brian Faler of Bloomberg News and by Sam Hananel of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/28/2013