It’s Not Obama’s Sequester After All - It Was Authored By the GOP

In several previous posts on this blog it was noted that with sequestration to commence on March 1st the Republican mantra has become that sequestration was the brainchild of the Obama White House.  There's only one problem with the GOP storyline is that it isn't true.  That's right, sequestration actually began with the Congressional Republicans as evidenced by an e-mail and power point presentation from none other than GOP Speaker of the House John Boehner.  This reality needs to be shouted from the mountain tops to educate the general populace that the GOP leaders in Congress are - surprise, surprise - lying (one Hampton Roads local subscriber repeated the lie in a comment on the article I linked to in this morning's post on sequestration).  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the documentation that traces sequestration right back to the GOP members of Congress.  Here are excerpts:

With deep sequestration cuts just days away, Congress is on vacation. But they’ve still got plenty of time to play the blame game.  The latest semantic spin is to call the looming $1.2 trillion in cuts, which could throw the whole economy back into recession, “Obama’s Sequester.” House Speaker John Boehner indulged this approach half a dozen times in a floor speech before he went on break, establishing its place in the talking-points firmament.

There are a couple problems with this tactic, as my colleague Michael Tomasky pointed out Tuesday. Congress passed sequestration before the president signed it, and the whole self-defeating exercise was carried out in response to Tea Party Republicans’ insistence that we play chicken with the debt ceiling, which ultimately cost America its AAA credit rating.

But here’s the thing. I happened to come across an old email that throws cold water on House Republicans’ attempts to call this “Obama’s Sequester.” It’s a PowerPoint presentation that Boehner’s office developed with the Republican Policy Committee and sent out to the Capitol Hill GOP on July 31, 2011. Intended to explain the outline of the proposed debt deal, the presentation is titled: “Two Step Approach to Hold President Obama Accountable.”

It’s essentially an internal sales document from the old dealmaker Boehner to his unruly and often unreasonable Tea Party cohort. But it’s clear as day in the presentation that “sequestration” was considered a cudgel to guarantee a reduction in federal spending—the conservatives’ necessary condition for not having America default on its obligations.

The presentation lays out the deal in clear terms, describing the spending backstop as “automatic across-the-board cuts (‘sequestration’). Same mechanism used in 1997 Balanced Budget Agreement.”

• Sets up a new sequestration process to cut spending across-the-board—and ensure that any debt limit increase is met with greater spending cuts—IF Joint Committee fails to achieve at least $1.2T in deficit reduction.

• If this happens, POTUS may request up to $1.2T for a debt limit increase, and if granted, then across-the-board spending cuts would result that would equal the difference between $1.2T and the deficit reduction enacted as a result of Joint Committee.

• Across-the-board spending cuts would apply to FYs 2013-2021, and apply to both mandatory & discretionary programs.

• Total reductions would be equally split between defense and non-defense programs. Across-the-board cuts would also apply to Medicare. Other programs, including Social Security, Medicaid, veterans, and civil & military pay, would be exempt.

• Sequestration process is designed to guarantee that Congress acts on the Joint Committee’s legislation to cut spending.

And that’s pretty much exactly what’s scheduled to start happening on March 1. Democrats could just as easily spin this as “Boehner’s Sequester” or “Cantor’s Sequester” and offer indelible digital evidence to back up their claim.

A slide from the final page of Speaker John Boehner's Powerpoint to House Republicans on July 31st, 2011, obtained by The Daily Beast.

Boehner's full power point can be found here.  Boehner and his fellow Republicans are, simply put, liars.  What's particularly telling is that the increase in the rank dishonesty of the GOP is that to correlates directly with the rise of the Christofascists within the GOP.  No one lies more than the self-congratulatory "godly Christian" crowd and their political whores in the GOP.