By Susan Duclos
As Obama's sequestration draws near the Pentagon has informed Congress that they are furloughing its civilian workforce of 800,000 employees.
Republicans in the House of Representative have passed two separate bills replacing the automatic cuts with other less onerous spending cuts to avoid this reality, yet Barack Obama has taken the position that unless he is allowed to raise taxes again in any deal to replace a law that as of now is completely about spending cuts..... Obama's sequestration will officially go into effect on March 1, 2013.
From a piece yesterday here at WuA:
BuzzFeed reports Obama's insistence on replacing the sequester, which again is all spending cuts, with tax revenue and less cuts than are in the sequestration law.
With the sequester due to hit on March 1, Obama will address reporters at 10:45 Tuesday from an auditorium in the White House complex to increase the pressure on Republicans to agree to raise revenues to offset the cuts, the official said.
"With less than two weeks before these cuts hit, the President will challenge Republicans to make a very simple choice: do they protect investments in education, health care and national defense or do they continue to prioritize and protect tax loopholes that benefit the very few at the expense of middle and working class Americans," the official said.
Now remember, back in December 2012, during the fiscal cliff negotiations, Barack Obama rejected the Republican plan to eliminate certain deductions and loopholes and insisted on a tax rate hike for upper income Americans... which he got. He also was allowed to let the payroll tax holiday expire which generated more tax revenue from 77 percent of American workers.
800,000 civilian Pentagon employees are being held hostage to Obama's demand to raise taxes revenue once again.
