White House braces for sequester

Brushing aside accusations of fear mongering, the White House on Sunday came out with details of how $85 billion in automatic budget cuts, scheduled to come into effect from Friday, would affect all fifty states and Washington, DC, presenting a grim picture of job losses, economic hardship, health troubles and education setbacks.

"Unless Congress acts by March 1st, a series of automatic cuts - called the sequester - will take effect that threaten hundreds of thousands of middle class jobs, and cut vital services for children, seniors, people with mental illness and our men and women in uniform," read the White House report.

Among the services to be hit would be education, education programmes for children with disabilities, programmes that help low income students go to college, clean air and water programmes, military cuts, law enforcement and several others.

But there was also a political message in the announcement that was not hard to tell according to commentators. The blame game had been set in motion by the White House with, White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer repeatedly pointing out in a Sunday conference call with reporters, it was the fault of the Republicans. "It's going into effect because Republicans are choosing for it to go into effect," he said.

Republicans though have a different take on the issue arguing the White House insistence on new tax revenues had set the stage for the lack of agreement on a way to modify the cuts.

Meanwhile, both Democratic and Republican leaders are expected to introduce competing proposals this week seeking to replace the indiscriminate reductions, though neither sees much chance of the plans going through, which makes the sequester almost certain to kick in of Friday according to commentators.