Reporters in recent days have been taking a much more skeptical view of White House claims related to how automatic budget cuts will impact Americans in coming weeks, as reporters on Wednesday again tangled at a briefing with White House Press Secretary Jay Carney over the central issue of whether the Obama Administration is inflating some of the consequences.
Here are several portions of the White House briefing as reporters ask about claims made by the Education Secretary and others:
Q The Education Secretary was here yesterday. He said some things that didn't prove to be true about the immediacy of pink slips for teachers. He mentioned a specific school district in West Virginia. They're not sequester-related at all. He made some sort of mild -- suggested that they might not be. They're clearly not. How confident are you, Jay, and confident is this administration that the things it's saying and the portrait it is presenting to the country is not only accurate but will stand the scrutiny of time once these cuts begin?
MR. CARNEY: Well, we're very confident --
Q Because it's not the first time that there was a note of exaggeration or factual inaccuracy.
MR. CARNEY: Oh, really? Because if you want to provide other examples, I'd take them.
Q The FAA can't explain definitively there will be 90-minute delays. That's another example.
MR. CARNEY: Well, I don't know that the Secretary of Transportation was giving you an absolute minute target for how much the delays will be. If there are going to be delays as a result of reduction in man-hours and personnel among our air traffic controllers, that's a fact. And I hope you keep that in mind when you're on your next commercial flight and you're delayed, if that does in fact come into effect with the sequester.
I would refer you to the Department of Education and to the superintendent of schools in the district that you mentioned for specifics about that. I'm certainly not familiar with it. I can tell you that the impacts of sequester are real, and to diminish them --
Q But you're familiar with that example -- it's wrong. That was wrong.
MR. CARNEY: Well, I'm unfamiliar of the example. I would refer you to the Department of Education and to the superintendent of the school district for more information about it. I don't have it. What I can tell you is that --
Q Jay, it came from your podium, right? You guys said that. You guys made the statement.
Q It was in this room, and --
MR. CARNEY: I'm just saying I don't have any -- I am not personally in contact with individual school districts --
Q So you're asserting something and you're asking us to check with a local school affiliate on whether or not --
MR. CARNEY: No, no, Hans. Let me rewind the tape where I said I would refer you to the Department of Education, which is here in Washington, D.C., not a local school district, for more information.
Q You also referred us to the district.
MR. CARNEY: Well, obviously, the school district is a good place to go for information about the school district.
Q But they said the information said at that podium was false, it was wrong. So I'm asking you to acknowledge that.
MR. CARNEY: Jon, I don't have any more for you in it. I welcome -- I encourage you to make phone calls in the old-fashioned reporting sense to find out more if you like. I don't have anything more for you on it.
The fact is the effects of sequester will be real if it takes place, beginning tomorrow night. In Ohio -- Ohio will lose approximately $25.1 million in funding for primary and secondary education, putting around 350 teacher and aide jobs at risk. In addition, about 34,000 fewer students would be served, and approximately 100 fewer schools would receive funding. If you don't think that's real -- if this happens, you should go out to Ohio and ask the families that are affected if they think it's real.
California will lose about $3.3 million in funding for jobs search assistance, referral, and placement -- meaning around 129,770 fewer people will get the help and skills they need to find employment. If you don't think that the effects of sequester are real, if sequester takes place, after a few weeks, fly to California, go to a jobs assistance placement office, find the people who aren't getting served, and ask them if they think it's real.
Ask the family whose child will not have a slot in Head Start whether they think it's real. Ask the civilian Defense Department employee, who's already gotten a notification that he or she will --
Q But even the President has said that --
MR. CARNEY: Jessica, let me finish -- that he or she will be furloughed, whether that has a real impact. They might lose 10 or 20 percent of their pay for the month or the year -- whether that has a real impact on their family budget. I think to suggest otherwise is --
Q No one in this room suggested otherwise. I asked you about what the Education Secretary said --
MR. CARNEY: And I'm saying for more information about that you should go to the Department of Education. What I'm saying is you're using an example -- again, I don't have details on it -- to suggest that the whole argument --
Q I asked you about it. I just asked you.
MR. CARNEY: Right, again, let's rewind the tape, because what you said after that was, do you think -- using this as an example -- that we're exaggerating the effects of sequester. And I just gave you concrete examples of what's going to happen. Those are real people with real impacts. And I think they wonder, when they sit around their kitchen tables, why Washington can't compromise, and in this case, because compromise represents willingness to accept policies that aren't 100 percent of what you want. The President has done that again and again. Unfortunately, Republicans seem to be unwilling to do that when it comes to sequester, so the sequester may take place with the effects that we've talked about.
Q Even the President said last night, economists say this is not a cliff, it's a tumble downward. It's conceivable in the first few weeks, the first month, that a lot of people may not notice the full impact of the sequester.
MR. CARNEY: Sure.
Q Is he concerned that you've overstated the impact of it initially and he's trying to dial it back?
MR. CARNEY: It's our responsibility to be upfront about the fact that you cannot responsibly cut $85 billion out of the budget in seven months without having -- in the way that the law is designed without having dramatic effects on the defense industry and civilian workers, on our national security readiness, on teachers, on kids in Head Start. That's just a fact. It's also a --
Q It's a markedly different tone from the tone that, for example, was in what the Attorney General said when he says, this is going to have an impact on the safety of this country, and anyone who says otherwise is lying.
MR. CARNEY: But that's -- if you reduce the number of border security guards, that has an impact on our safety. If you are forced because of the sequester to change our military readiness posture, that has an effect on our safety.
I think the reporters are the ones who are suggesting that we -- that all of this was going to happen the stroke after midnight when the sequester goes into effect. We've never said that. We've always been clear about when you talk about -- furloughs, notices go out; once you receive a notice there's always a 30-day warning before the furloughs actually begin.
We've been very clear about the different impacts. When Arne Duncan was here yesterday, Secretary of Education, he made clear that a lot of the actual effects in the education world won't be felt concretely until the fall because that's when the new school year begins. There are some specific areas like school districts outside of military bases or on Indian reservations that will feel the impact immediately because they'll be forced by the nature of their grants to cut their budgets for this school year.
We've been very clear. What the President said last night is -- and I think what other people have said -- is that this will be a rolling impact, an effect that will build and build and build. And as the CBO has said, and as outside economic organizations have said, we'll see a contraction in the amount of GDP growth -- reduction in the amount of GDP growth by a full half of a percent or more. And we'll see up to 750,000 jobs lost. That's the CBO. That's Moody's and Macroeconomics Advisors. So that's real. At least we agree with those assessments. And it affects real people.
…
Q Okay, so we're concerned about the facts in this debate about the sequester. In the back-and-forth just here about Arne Duncan, are you acknowledging from this podium now, though, that some of the things he said yesterday were not true?
MR. CARNEY: Again, I haven't independently looked into them, so I can't really --
Q How can the public believe what you're saying day in, day out, about flight towers and everything else if you're not checking it out?
MR. CARNEY: Well, again, I had the Secretary of Transportation come up here and talk about the impacts on the FAA, the Secretary of Education talk about the impacts on areas of his budget. And that's because they're the experts in those fields. And I had the Secretary of Homeland Security talk about the effects on her areas of responsibility. So we do that because they know the most and the most in depth about those areas. So when you want an answer to a specific question I think you ought to take it to them.
I think the broader point, setting aside that issue, was I think strongly made, which is that there will be substantial effects on school districts around the country, on budgets to help poor children and budgets to help disabled kids, which are, as Secretary Duncan described, two of the biggest portions of his budget and that will unavoidably be affected when sequester is implemented.
So, again, those are real people out there who will suffer if sequester goes into effect and stays into effect for a substantial period of time.
Q On a specific, substantive point, yesterday when you were asked about the ICE Agency releasing detainees apparently because of budget cuts around sequester, you had said that the White House did not intervene beforehand. There's been some reporting overnight that perhaps ICE is rethinking this, and I wonder has the White House since yesterday's briefing intervened with ICE and said this is not a good idea?
MR. CARNEY: Not that I'm aware of. Again, this was a decision made by career officials at ICE without any input from the White House as a result of fiscal uncertainty over the continuing resolution and possible sequestration. I have no more information today about it than I did yesterday.
…
Q I just have one question about Arne Duncan. Wait, can I just finish with one last question about Arne Duncan? Are you in essence saying that one inaccurate example should not undercut your larger argument about the overall --
MR. CARNEY: I'm saying that I don't know the specifics about this example, but I'm certainly saying that the larger argument remains true. There's just -- it's irrefutable. It's been attested to by Republicans who, until they changed their political strategy, were shouting from the rooftops about the terrible effects of sequester. You guys reported on it --
Q You're asking for some forbearance on the specific examples.
MR. CARNEY: Again, I don't know the specifics so I'm not even sure I'm asking for forbearance. I'm just saying I don't know the specifics.
….
Q So what do you say to Mayor Bloomberg, who stood right over there yesterday and was asked about the warnings that have come out of the White House, and he said there's a lot of posturing. "Spare me, I live in that world. I mean, come on, let's get serious here." He was very dismissive of these warnings. Is Mayor Bloomberg just wrong about it?
MR. CARNEY: I wasn't there. I didn't hear what he had to say.
Q That's what he said.
MR. CARNEY: Different cities and regions and states will have different effects, depending on what kind of funding they get in the affected areas from the federal government. I can't speak to what the impacts will be on New York City. But there will be real-world impacts.
And it is I think just a fact that if you're at the receiving end of a notice that you're going to be furloughed or you're going to be laid off, that's nothing small. That's huge. And the people who get those notices will have Washington to blame -- in particular, unfortunately, the intransigence, the refusal to compromise and to do something reasonable and balanced that we've seen on Capitol Hill.
Reporters in recent days have been taking a much more skeptical view of White House claims related to how automatic budget cuts will impact Americans in coming weeks, as reporters on Wednesday again tangled at a briefing with White House Press Secretary Jay Carney over the central issue of whether ...
