Friday’s arrival of long-planned federal spending cuts is being greeted with plenty of umbrage but no movement on an alternative.
Georgia’s members of Congress are bracing for the impact on the state, including furloughs of civilian Department of Defense personnel, a haircut for the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and reduced funding for the Head Start program.
President Barack Obama is bringing Congressional leaders from both parties to the White House on Friday, though a sudden resolution appears unlikely.
Even Atlanta Democratic U.S. Rep. David Scott, a consistent Obama booster, said he is puzzled as to “why we’re meeting as the Titanic is going under now, and we’re meeting on deck here?”
Scott added, “We’ll see what comes out of it. Let’s not throw cold water on the fact that they’re meeting, even though it is strange.”
The stroke of midnight will not bring instant pain: Furloughs begin next month and the $85 billion in program cuts will take a while to fully phase in. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a number that actually can move lawmakers, is soaring. There is nothing approaching the legislative urgency seen around the 2011 breach of the federal borrowing limit or the “fiscal cliff” at the start of this year.
Meanwhile, each party points fingers as the other as the reason for the cuts lawmakers say they do not want, though a growing number are willing to accept them.
After remaining mostly quiet on the details for months, the White House has unleashed a public relations blitz on the impact of the across-the-board program cuts, with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood warning of flight delays and the Department of Homeland Security releasing nonviolent illegal immigrant detainees to save money.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s assertion Wednesday that some teachers were already getting layoff notices was quickly debunked by the news media, but school districts’ Title I funding will be squeezed, likely resulting in fewer teachers by fall.
“People don’t believe that the hysteria is genuine,” said U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, a Savannah Republican. “Where you’re talking about the debt ceiling and a potential Wall Street reaction, people not being able to conduct commerce, that had more of a ring to it.”
Even though he represents a military-heavy district in South Georgia, Kingston, who is likely to run for Senate next year, said he is hearing more from constituents telling him to let the cuts go through. They amount to about 2.4 percent of the overall budget and don’t come close to plugging this year’s deficit.
“People are also saying: ‘If you can’t find that money, we’ve got a huge problem,’ ” Kingston said. “So even as I just have come from a military hearing with all the four-stars (generals), I did not find them to be that convincing.”
The Senate on Thursday held a pair of votes on party lines, neither of which hit the 60-vote threshold to move forward, on Democrats’ and Republicans’ ideas to avoid the reductions, which are known in Washington-speak as “sequestration.” Democrats proposed a mix of tax hikes and cuts to other programs including farm subsidies.
Republicans, steadfastly opposed to additional tax increases, proposed directing agency heads to find the specific cuts, rather than instituting them across the board to each program.
“When you have flexibility, you have to play your hand,” Georgia Republican U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson said of the president. “You can’t generically blame Congress. You can’t change the subject. You have to actually talk about what, when and where, and that’s healthy.”
Democrats and the White House cast aside the approach, saying new tax revenue must be part of the deal.
The U.S. House passed an unrelated bill and went home Thursday. House Speaker John Boehner stressed repeatedly that the House passed a bill in December that would have shifted all of the cuts away from the military to other programs. It was rejected by Democrats in part because it slashed funding for the national health care law Obama pushed.
Republicans declared that the tax revenue increases from the “fiscal cliff” deal – in which marginal tax rates returned to pre-2001 levels for income above $450,000 for couples – were enough.
Athens Republican U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, who is running for Senate next year, said he would prefer to spend more money on the military and less on other programs. But “I certainly would rather see the sequester come in place than increased taxes on job producers, which is going to hurt our economy.”
DeKalb County Democratic U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson said Boehner was “boxed in” by his party’s conservative wing into refusing any tax revenue.
“I’m sure that the Republicans here in the House will continue their quest to destroy our economy so that they can … blame President Obama and the Democrats for the wreckage,” Johnson said.
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