GOP Passes The Blame For "Sequester"

The House Republicans are trying to play both sides of the fence right now regarding the "sequestration" cuts that will soon hit the federal budget (making deep across-the-board cuts in discretionary spending). On the one hand, the GOP wants the cuts to take place (except for the cuts to the military). They want draconian cuts to all spending here in the U.S. (especially programs that help poor and unemployed Americans). But they don't want to take credit for those cuts, because they know there's going to be a lot of unhappy voters when the cuts actually happen.

So, they are trying hard to make Americans believe that the sequestration is totally President Obama's fault. They want to make it seem that they didn't want to cuts and just bowed to pressure from the president. That's pure hogwash, and exactly backwards from what actually happened. It was the president who was virtually forced to sign the sequestration agreement, because it had been forced on him by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

Let's go back to 2011 when the sequestration agreement was passed in the House, and look at who voted for it. You can go here to see all of the votes for and against the sequestration. It turns out that the sequestration agreement passed the House of Representatives on a 218 to 210 vote. ALL of the 218 "yes" votes for sequestration were Republican House members, while 188 Democrats and 22 Republicans voted against the bill (and 5 Democrats did not vote). Doesn't it stretch all bounds of credibility to believe that not a single Democrat would vote for a bill that (according to Republicans) was proposed by the president?

Remember this when the cuts actually happen -- and they will because the GOP will block efforts to stop or delay those cuts (because they want to protect the rich from slightly higher taxes). Remember that this was a Republican idea that was approved in the House of Representative by ONLY Republican votes. Trying to blame the president at this point is just another outrageous Republican lie.