Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Sequestration is going to happen. At least that’s what yet another Republican U.S. House leader says.
“I think the sequester is going to happen,” House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., said Sunday on “Meet the Press.”
In fact, Ryan believes “we can’t lose those spending cuts” because GOP lawmakers believe reducing the planned federal budget by another $1.2 trillion is that important.
Ryan’s prediction came just a few days after House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., also said he now believes the $500 billion, 10-year cut to planned national defense and domestic spending will be triggered on March 1.
In a sign that should be troubling to the defense sector and Pentagon, Ryan at several points during the “MTP” interview referred to the sequester cuts in past tense.
Another ominous sign? Republicans on Capitol Hill already are playing the blame game.
“We think these sequesters will happen because the Democrats have opposed our efforts to replace those cuts with others and they’ve offered no alternatives,” Ryan said.
And McKeon blamed President Obama for not doing more to avoid the cuts.
FACT CHECK: The White House and congressional Democrats, as part of late-December efforts to avoid the fiscal cliff, proposed delaying the sequester by two years. Senate Republicans instantly rejected that proposal because they disagreed with the way in which Democrats wanted to pay for that 24-month delay. The GOP, at that time, did not counter with its own proposal on that “pay-for.”And the president Obama has talked publicly about “eliminating” both the pending defense cuts and an identical $500 billion, 10-year cut to domestic spending that Democrats oppose. Republicans disagree with how Obama wants to do it, and have yet to push their own plan that the other players in the process can support.