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Republican leaders in Congress have all but reneged on a key agreement they reached with the White House last summer rather than reconsider their unwavering stance against new tax revenue.
“I’ve got concerns about the sequester,” House Speaker John Boehner told reporters Thursday. “I’ve made that pretty clear. And replacing the sequester certainly has value. The defense portion of the sequester, in my view, would clearly hollow our military. The Secretary of Defense has said that, members of Congress have said it. But the question I would pose is, where’s the White House? Where’s the leadership that should be there to ensure that this sequester does not go into effect.”
“Sequester” is budget-speak for across-the-board cuts.
But the cuts he’s talking about were part of a deal he recently claimed he’d honor.
Boehner’s Thursday comments came moments after Senate Republicans unveiled their plan to partially phase out the enforcement mechanism by reducing the federal workforce and freezing federal pay. Both developments indicate Republican leaders no longer regard their own deal as sacrosanct.
Now Boehner’s pressuring the White House to let Republicans off the hook for the piece of the deficit enforcement mechanism that was designed to make them negotiate in good faith.
“Now we’re really talking skullduggery,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told reporters. “They understood what the consequences were. They agreed to the consequences, and they thought that they could walk away from all the deficit reduction that was possible in that and now say, well, forget about deficit reduction altogether when it comes to the defense budget. I think that an agreement was reached. It must be honored.”
