“Both Democrats and Republicans are trying to figure out how to stop the sequester from going into effect, but the two parties can’t agree on a plan. Senate Democrats introduced a plan titled the American Family Economic Protection Act, which identified $120 billion in savings that would replace sequester cuts until the end of December 2013. Republicans weren’t in agreement on their own solution, but eventually came forward with a counterproposal that would have kept the sequester in place, but given Obama control in implementing the cuts. Both plans were ultimately voted down.”
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In other words: what Republicans have wanted all along is to pass the buck on actual spending cuts to Obama so they could take credit for shrinking the size of government without having to actually take responsibility for the fallout. Instead, they could point their finger at Obama when the budget cuts actually hurt and argue that Obama is hurting people just to score political points, even though they themselves have been completely unwilling and unable to come up with any sort of plan to cut taxes that wouldn’t be painful.