How the sequester came into being?

[kentuck]

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/oct/24/barack-obama/obama-says-congress-owns-sequestration-cuts/

<snips>
Last year, the United States government was reaching its legal debt limit, which meant Congress had to authorize a higher level for borrowing. Raising the debt limit (also called the debt ceiling) was in some ways symbolic: Congress has the power of the purse, and the decisions to spend the money had already been made.

....

But in the summer of 2011, House Republicans insisted that actual spending cuts go along with an increase to the debt limit. House Speaker John Boehner led negotiations with the Obama White House, and at first the two sides seemed to be moving toward a wide-ranging overhaul of the federal budget, referred to in the media as a "grand bargain."

The closed-door negotiations fell apart, though, and since then journalists have been sorting through a lot of finger-pointing. Some blame Boehner for being unable to deliver his own Republicans on a deal, thanks to tea party opposition to any new taxes. Others blame Obama for his inexperience, for not cultivating relationships with congressional Republicans and for tactical mistakes at negotiating. Some blame both sides.

At any rate, Republicans and Democrats came to a less ambitious agreement to raise the debt limit through the Budget Control Act of 2011. The law found approximately $1.2 trillion in budget cuts spread over 10 years. But it also directed Congress to find another $1.2 trillion through a Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, which came to be known as "the super-committee."

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[kentuck]

1. More info from this link

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/oct/24/barack-obama/obama-says-congress-owns-sequestration-cuts/


<snip>
"While both parties are culpable for sequestration because the Budget Control Act passed Congress, the president proposed it originally and ultimately owns its outcome," said Mackenzie Eaglen, an expert on defense with the conservative American Enterprise Institute and an adviser to the Romney campaign. "That is because he alone can lead by calling the party leaders together for a resolution today if he wanted as president."

Other see the two parties as co-owners of sequestration, especially since Republicans in Congress voted for the law that set up its possibility. In the House, 174 Republicans and 95 Democrats voted for the law, while 66 Republicans and 95 Democrats opposed it. (Final tally: Passed 269-161.) In the Senate, 28 Republicans and 45 Democrats voted for it, while 19 Republicans and 6 Democrats opposed it. (Final tally: Passed 74-26)

"The logic that lays the blame for sequestration at Obama's feet, because he negotiated the BCA with GOP leaders in Congress, could just as easily apply to those other negotiators, or, indeed, any member of Congress who voted for the BCA in August 2011," said Christopher Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. Preble favors reductions to the defense budget.

"I do not believe it accurate to refer to the cuts that will occur in both defense and non-defense discretionary spending under sequestration as ‘Obama's cuts,’" he said.

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[kentuck]

2. Furthermore

same link:

Our ruling

Obama said that the sequester -- and the defense cuts that would result from it -- was not his proposition. "It is something that Congress has proposed," he said in the debate.

But it was Obama’s negotiating team that came up with the idea for defense cuts in 2011, though they were intended to prod Congress to come up with a better deal for reining in the deficit, not as an effort to make those cuts reality.

Meanwhile, members of both parties in Congress voted for the legislation that set up the possibility of sequestration. Obama’s position is that Congress should now act to avoid those across-the-board cuts.

Obama can’t rightly say the sequester isn’t his, but he did need cooperation from Congress to get to this point. We rate the statement Mostly False.

[Blecht]

3. This isn't written on stone tablets that some bearded guy brought down from a mountain

Repeal the fucking Budget Control Act of 2011!

It could not be any simpler. The fact that NOBODY is calling for the repeal shows that this is nothing but political theater in which EVERYBODY is an actor.