Politics
Obama to urge congress to revisit $1.2 Trillion in spending cuts
The threat of the across-the-board cuts was supposed to prod the panel, but it never got on track and collapsed just before Thanksgiving over intractable differences on tax increases and cuts to popular programs like Medicare.
The failure of the panel capped a long, difficult budget year in which the warring sides were only able to agree when facing either a shutdown of the government or an unthinkable default on U.S. obligations. Policymakers face the prospect of more gridlock this year as election-year politics promise to even further cripple the already limited ability of Obama and Capitol Hill Republicans to work together.
In that light, the administration’s proposal could be doomed to dead-on-arrival status despite widespread desire to turn off the automatic cuts.
At the same time, a new wrinkle has emerged due to the collapse of the supercommittee: a new set of spending caps for the 2013 budget year that begins October 1 that require cuts of about US$8 billion from the US$554 billion budget for defense programs, the first outright cuts since the so-called peace dividend of the early 1990s.
The required defense cuts are separate from those that would be imposed under the sequester, but the administration official predicted lawmakers might revisit them when turning to the annual appropriations bills later this year.
The budget is slated to be released February 6.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.
