Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid said Thursday that it is still “not too late” to avert potentially devastating budget cuts due to start taking effect Friday, and he blasted a Republican plan that he said would embrace the cuts without taking responsibility for them.
In a floor speech a day ahead of a White House meeting between President Obama and a bipartisan group of congressional leaders, Reid (D-Nev.) accused Republicans of being “completely inflexible” by refusing to countenance revenue increases, including cutting subsidies and closing tax loopholes, as part of a solution to avoid steep automatic spending cuts known the sequester.
In the meeting planned for Friday, Obama is expected to push Republican congressional leaders to accept higher tax revenue to avoid the cuts, and the Republicans are expected to reply that they already compromised at the beginning of the year when they agreed to more than $600 billion in new taxes, according to officials in both camps.
“Hundreds of thousands of civilian employees of the Defense Department will be furloughed in coming weeks and months,” Reid said in his floor speech. “Families and businesses across this country are also bracing for the pain of deep cuts to programs that keep our food safe, our water clean and our borders secure.”
He added: “But it’s not too late to avert these damaging cuts.” He touted a “balanced” Democratic plan that he said would “reduce the deficit by making smart spending cuts,” would “close wasteful tax loopholes” and “stop wasteful subsidies to farmers.” The plan also “would ask the wealthiest among us — those making millions each year — to pay just a little more to help reduce the deficit,” he said.
The Senate plans to vote Thursday afternoon on replacing the sequester in part with tax increases on millionaires. The Democratic bill is expected to fail, as is a GOP alternative that would give the White House more flexibility to decide where the cuts would fall.
In its latest e-mail to supporters, Organizing for Action, a nonprofit set up to promote Obama’s second-term agenda, accused the Republicans of “refusing to compromise.” The e-mail from Jim Messina, the group’s chairman and former Obama campaign manager, said: “If congressional Republicans don’t act by tomorrow, we’re going to be hit by a series of devastating, automatic budget cuts.... It’s a sledgehammer to the budget, our economy, and millions of Americans across the country — and the most frustrating part? It doesn’t have to happen.”
Dire warnings from Democrats and the White House notwithstanding, the impact of the cuts remains a subject of considerable dispute.
Reid said the plan advanced by Senate Republicans would not replace “the pain of the sequester with something smarter and more reasonable,” but would “embrace these devastating cuts, while abandoning any of the responsibility that goes along with them.” He said the GOP plan really amounts to “a punt.”
“Republicans should give Congress true flexibility — flexibility to cut wasteful subsidies, flexibility to close unnecessary tax loopholes and flexibility to ask the richest of the rich to contribute a little more,” the Senate Democratic leader said. “Instead, they’re completely inflexible — insisting we risk hundreds of thousands of American jobs, as well as programs that strengthen families and small businesses across this nation. But that should come as no surprise. As usual, Republicans have put the demands of special interests over the needs of middle-class Americans.”
Harry Reid says it’s still ‘not too late’ to avert sequester
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Harry Reid says it’s still ‘not too late’ to avert sequester
