WASHINGTON — A White House report issued Friday warns that $109 billion in across-the-board spending cuts at the start of the new year would be “deeply destructive” to the military and core government responsibilities like patrolling U.S. borders and air-traffic control.
The report says the automatic cuts, mandated by the failure of last year’s congressional deficit “supercommittee” to strike a budget deal, would require an across-the-board cut of 9 percent to most Pentagon programs and 8 percent in many domestic programs.
The process of automatic cuts is called sequestration, and the administration has no flexibility in how to distribute the cuts, other than to exempt military personnel and war-fighting accounts.
“Sequestration would be deeply destructive to national security, domestic investments and core government functions,” the report says.
The cuts, combined with the expiration of Bush-era tax cuts at the end of the year, have been dubbed the “fiscal cliff.” Economists warn that the one-two punch could drive the economy back into recession.
The across-the-board cuts were devised as part of last summer’s budget and debt deal between President Barack Obama and Capitol Hill Republicans. They were intended to drive the supercommittee — evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans — to strike a compromise. But the panel deadlocked, and the warring combatants have spent more time since then blaming each other for the looming cuts than seeking ways to avoid them.
The White House report continues in that vein, blasting House Republicans for an approach to avoiding the sequester that relies on further cuts to domestic programs while protecting upper-bracket taxpayers from higher rates proposed by the president.
In advance of the report’s release, White House press secretary Jay Carney went on the offensive, blasting “the adamant refusal of Republicans to accept the fundamental principle that we ought to deal with our fiscal challenges in a balanced way.”
Republicans are trying to cast any blame for a possible sequester squarely on Obama, saying it was the White House’s idea during last summer’s budget negotiations — an argument that fails to acknowledge that GOP leaders backed the idea at the time and all voted for it.
The report warns that the Pentagon faces cuts that “would result in a reduction in readiness of many nondeployed units, delays in investments in new equipment and facilities, cutbacks in equipment repairs, declines in military research and development efforts and reductions in base services for military families.”
On the domestic front, the White House warns of dire effects, as well. But many big programs, like Social Security, Medicaid, federal employee pensions and veterans’ benefits and health care would be exempted.
Examples of cuts
• $11 billion, Medicare
• $14 million to treat those made ill in the 9/11 attacks
• $2.5 billion, medical research
• $140 million for financial aid for college students
• $1 billion for aid for disabled and children with special needs
