NQ1965
PR Elite
That is incorrect. The sequester was written into the Budget Control Act of 2011 by republicans. They then had the
opportunity to pass a full budget before the sequester took effect two years later but failed to put anything before
the president to sign.
The sequester was a product of the republican congress.
We can split hairs over who's idea it was, but the bottom line is, Obama signed the BCA into legislation, and then it was the failure of the SUPER COMMITTEE to make the Budget Control Act plans to happen. Obama knew the risk, he knew what was in the Bill when he signed it. He gambled.
Legislative history[edit] (Wikipedia)
On August 2, 2011, President Obama signed the Budget Control Act of 2011 as part of an agreement with Congress to resolve the debt-ceiling crisis. The Act provided for a Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (the "super committee") to produce legislation by late November that would decrease the deficit by $1.2 trillion over ten years. When the super committee failed to act,[9] another part of the BCA went into effect. This directed automatic across-the-board cuts (known as "sequestrations") split evenly between defense and domestic spending, beginning on January 2, 2013.
The sequestration became a major topic of the fiscal cliff debate. The debate's resolution, the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA), eliminated much of the tax side of the dispute but only delayed the budget sequestrations for two months, thus reducing the original $110 billion to be saved per fiscal year to $85 billion in 2013.[10]
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And on the Republican congress failing to pass a full budget for the President to sign.... I recall there were numerous budget attempts, but by the time they cut out all of the BS spending the Dems and Senate stuffed in, at that point there wasn't any way it would pass back through the senate, or would of been signed by Obama. This was one time that I was actually proud of the Boehner and McConnell for standing ground.
The part that always amazed me, is how Reid, Pelosi, and many others have spun the whole sequestration event off as the Republican parties fault.