As polls show Barack Obama leading the GOP in public support on major issues, Republican leaders are increasingly seeking to cast the president in a negative light. To that end, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) recently penned a scathing rebuke of President Obama, blaming him for the nearly $1.2 trillion in across-the-board cuts set to go into effect next month and calling the impending reductions "the president's sequester." Really, Mr. Speaker?
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Below is an excerpt of Boehner's op-ed at the Huffington Post:
"Most Americans are just hearing about this Washington creation for the first time: the sequester," Boehner writes. "What they might not realize from Mr. Obama's statements is that it is a product of the president's own failed leadership."
Boehner continues, "There is nothing wrong with cutting spending that much — we should be cutting even more — but the sequester is an ugly and dangerous way to do it."
The sequester stems from the Budget Control Act of 2011, which mandated the cuts if a congressional "super committee" failed to reach an agreement on how to reduce the deficit. In November 2011, the bipartisan group announced it hadn't reached a deal, meaning the cuts to defense and domestic spending would go into effect in January 2013. The sequester was later delayed to begin March 1 as part of the "fiscal cliff" negotiations.
In the op-ed, Boehner slams the president for not offering a "detailed plan that can pass Congress."
"As the president's outrage about the sequester grows in coming days, Republicans have a simple response: Mr. President, we agree that your sequester is bad policy," Boehner writes. "What spending are you willing to cut to replace it?"
Boehner's latest comments continue the back-and-forth blame game between Republicans and Democrats over the quickly approaching cuts.
Read more at the Huffington Post here and here.
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