U.S. President Barack Obama said Saturday Congress should replace "dumb" federal
spending cuts before the so-called sequester "causes further damage."
In his weekly radio and Internet address, the president said the sequester -- a
series of automatic, across-the-board federal spending cuts -- was a bad idea
when Congress adopted it and "as the country saw this week, it's a bad idea
now."
Obama said the cuts are affecting families whose children are being "kicked out
of Head Start programs," and "seniors who depend on programs like Meals on
Wheels to live independently."
"There are military communities -- families that have already sacrificed enough
-- coping under new strains," he said. "All because of these cuts."
He noted furloughs of air traffic controllers resulted this week in flight
delays with travelers "stuck for hours in airports and on planes, and rightly
frustrated by it."
"And, maybe because they fly home each weekend, the Members of Congress who
insisted these cuts take hold finally realized that they actually apply to them
too," Obama said.
"Republicans claimed victory when the sequester first took effect, and now
they've decided it was a bad idea all along," he said. "Well, first, they should
look at their own budget. If the cuts they propose were applied across the
board, the FAA would suffer cuts three times deeper."
Congress enacted legislation this week allowing the U.S. Department of
Transportation to shift funds within its budget to avoid the need for air
traffic controller furloughs, but the president called that "a temporary fix. A
Band-Aid," and said cuts will keep affecting "other parts of the government that
provide vital services for the American people."
"And we can't just keep putting Band-Aids on every cut," he said. "It's not a
responsible way to govern. There is only one way to truly fix the sequester: by
replacing it before it causes further damage.
"A couple weeks ago, I put forward a budget that replaces the next several years
of these dumb cuts with smarter cuts; reforms our tax code to close wasteful
special interest loopholes; and invests in things like education, research, and
manufacturing that will create new jobs right now," Obama said.
The president said he hopes Congress "will find the same sense of urgency and
bipartisan cooperation to help the families still in the crosshairs of these
cuts."
"They may not feel the pain felt by kids kicked off Head Start, or the 750,000
Americans projected to lose their jobs because of these cuts, or the long-term
unemployed who will be further hurt by them," he said. "But that pain is real."
