Obama: ?Meat-cleaver? cuts will kill jobs

President Barack Obama talks against automatic spending cuts scheduled to take effect next week. (Larry Downin??Conjuring up the specter of fired teachers, furloughed FBI agents, idled Border Patrol agents, sidelined firefighters, criminals freed by cutbacks and "hundreds of thousands" of lost jobs, President Barack Obama pressed congressional Republicans on Tuesday to agree to increase tax revenues as part of a plan to avert "brutal" across-the-board spending cuts set to take effect one week from Friday.

"If Congress allows this meat-cleaver approach to take place, it will jeopardize our military readiness, it will eviscerate job-creating investments in education and energy and medical research," Obama warned in a speech at the White House, flanked by emergency workers. ?It won?t consider whether we?re cutting some bloated program that has outlived its usefulness or a vital service that Americans depend on every single day.?

Under a 2011 law, the so-called "sequester" will slash about $85 billion starting March 1 unless Congress agrees to a new round of deficit reduction. But with time quickly ticking down, lawmakers do not appear to have a solution in the works. Obama has repeatedly called for a blend of spending cuts chiefly affecting entitlement programs like Medicare and new tax increases achieved by targeting loopholes that chiefly benefit the wealthy and rich industries. Republicans have rejected that approach?while blaming the White House for coming up with the sequester. The across-the-board cuts, which Congress approved, are the price to pay for lawmakers' failure to come up with a compromise to stem the tide of red ink that has flooded the nation's finances.

"These cuts are not smart, they are not fair, they will hurt our economy, they will add hundreds of thousands of Americans to the unemployment rolls," Obama said. "This is not an abstraction. People will lose their jobs."

Obama again urged Congress to pass a short-term budget fix in the absence of a complete budget resolution.

?I am willing to cut more spending that we don?t need, get rid of programs that aren?t working? and pare down entitlement outlays while boosting government revenues by overhauling the tax code, Obama said. That ?balanced approach [could] finish the job of deficit reduction.?

But ?at a minimum, Congress should pass a smaller package of spending cuts and tax reforms ? not to kick the can down the road, but to give them time to work together on a plan that finishes the job of deficit reduction in a sensible way," he said.

Republican House Speaker John Boehner immediately panned the president?s performance.

?Once again, the president offered no credible plan that can pass Congress?only more calls for higher taxes,? Boehner said in a statement.

?We should close loopholes and carve-outs in the tax code, but that revenue should be used to lower rates across the board,? the Republican leader said. ?Tax reform is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to boost job creation in America. It should not be squandered to enable more Washington spending. Spending is the problem, spending must be the focus.?

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-emergency-responders-push-republicans-sequester-141651336--politics.html

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