June 18, 2013

Politics

White House: We proposed sequester, but that’s ‘pretty irrelevant’

BY: JOEL GEHRKE MARCH 4, 2013 | 12:58 PM
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President Obama’s team proposed sequestration, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney acknowledged, but he also said that the origin of the automatic spending cuts is “pretty irrelevant” to the debate about the issue.

“Well, Senators Gramm and Rudman came up with the idea back in the 1980s,” Carney initially told reporters when asked if Obama regrets coming up with the idea. “‘Let’s do it the way they did it back under Reagan,’ our team said to Republicans, thinking that might be appealing, and it was . . . This is all pretty irrelevant. What is relevant is that it was never supposed to be policy.”

Republicans have worked very hard to blame Obama for sequestration, but Democrats remain equally determined to blame Republicans for the cuts.

“GOP leadership refuses to come together with Dem. leadership to try to avoid the sequester’s damaging effects,” Debbie Wasserman Schultz tweeted on Friday. “Truly the #GOPsequester.”

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