MOBILE, Ala. (WPMI) -- Late this evening, President Barack Obama signed the order giving the government permission to start cutting $85 billion dollars from federal accounts. Mr. Obama had opposed the across-the-board reductions, but no compromise with Congress meant the cuts could not be avoided.
Before the ink dried on the President's signature, criticism of the White House was already solid.
"He is the man that is supposed to maintain efficiency, he has known this problem was coming for 18 months," Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) told Local 15's Derrick Rose, "I believe they deliberately waited until the end and tried to make a political show out of it," he said of Obama and Senate Democratic leaders.
Sessions flew to Mobile Friday after a long fight against the White House plan to use tax revenue to avoid the cuts. That plan failed with Sessions and fellow Republicans standing firm against tax increases. He said Republicans compromised on taxes at the beginning of the year and were not willing to do it again.
"We shouldn't spend above <Budget Control Act of 2011> and say we've done something good by raising taxes to justify spending above it."
Now the sequester cuts are certain.
"This is not a win for anybody, this is a loss for the American people," Obama said earlier Friday.
The Department of Defense, which makes up 1/6 of government spending will lose the biggest portion. The U.S. Coast Guard in Alabama could bear some of the weight. "These young men and women are going to take helicopters out into challenging conditions and i don't need to have them worrying about their families or worrying about their employment, i need them to keep their heads in the job," Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Robert Papp Jr. said.
Outside the Defense Department, civilian families will feel it too. According to the White House website, $11 million dollars in education are at risk as well as 1100 children who could be bumped out of Head Start. Working parents could also be without child care subsidies.
"If the President and the CEOs and his cabinet people go out and the first thing they cut is aid to children, then they ought to be removed from office," Sessions said.
Simply put from Sessions: if the President wants to place blame, he need not look further than the oval office.
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