President Obama and a bipartisan group of congressional leaders failed to reach a deal Friday to avoid deep budget cuts that are set to begin later in the day, ushering in an era of deeper austerity and introducing a new phase of uncertainty for Americans who rely on the government for employment or services.
After years of last-minute deals and clashes over spending and taxes, Obama and congressional leaders were resigned to let the cuts to domestic and defense spending, known as the sequester, go into effect. Obama must sign an order directing the start of the spending reductions before midnight.
But Obama and Republicans also said on Friday that they would back legislation that keeps the government operating in late March, when a stopgap measure funding federal operations expires. That means that a government shutdown is less likely, and the deep budget cuts will remain for the forseeable future.
In a news conference following the meeting, Obama said he would continue to make the case that Congress should replace the sequester, which the White House has repeatedly called devastating, with alternative spending cuts and tax hikes on the wealthy. Yet he also expressed a desire to move on to other priorities, such as immigration, that may draw more bipartisan support.
"We shouldn't be making a series of dumb, arbitrary cuts to things that businesses depend on and workers depend on," Obama said in the White House briefing room, after the meeting broke up. "Not everyone will feel the pain of these cuts right away. The pain, though, will be real."
Obama recounted the litany of horrors he has associated with the sequester, from hundreds of thousands of job losses to steep pay cuts for border patrol agents and the Pentagon's 900,000 civilian employees. He blamed the Republicans, saying they are choosing the spending cuts over scaling back tax breaks that benefit the wealthy.
"It's happening because of a choice that Republicans in Congress have made," he said. "They've allowed these cuts to happen because they refuse to budge on closing a single wasteful loophole to help reduce the deficit."
Outside the White House after the meeting, which began at 10:18 a.m. and lasted less than an hour, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio)
In an interview with NBC later in the day, Boehner said he didn't really see a path forward that avoided the sequester. "If I did, that meeting at the White House today might have gone better."
He told reporters that new taxes could not be considered as part of the solution to the sequester.
"The discussion about revenue, in my view, is over," Boehner said, adding that the problem is spending. He said the House would move a budget measure next week to fund the government past March 27 and avert a government shutdown. He then walked away without taking any questions.
The sequester represents $1.2 trillion of spending cuts over 10 years — including tens of billions of dollars of cuts between now and the end of September. The across-the-board cuts fall on the Defense Department and domestic agencies. Some major safety-net programs, including Medicaid and food stamps, are exempted.
