House Votes to Replace 2013 Across-the-Board Cuts With Deep Slashes at Low-Income Programs

Neither the President nor the House like the cuts to military, domestic, and international appropriations slated to take effect starting next January.  Those reductions are part of a ten-year deficit reduction plan enacted in the Budget Control Act.  They were meant to be unpalatable, to push Congress towards a more balanced plan including new revenues and health care savings in Medicare and Medicaid. 

The House Republican majority is unwilling to swallow the appropriations cuts, finding the $55 billion defense reduction particularly distasteful.  But their alternative, H.R. 5652, the Sequester Replacement Act of 2012, places the burden of deficit reduction squarely on low-income people and federal workers.  The bill prompted a veto threat by the President and has been rejected by the Senate Democratic leadership. 

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