Ryan: ‘Sequester is going to happen’

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis) said, “I think the sequester is going to happen.”

Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, said that the $1.2 Trillion in automatic spending cuts is likely to happen because Democrats have opposed every replacement spending plan the Republicans put forward while offering no alternatives of their own.

The President and Congressional Democrats have signaled that they expect more tax increases and are not planning to cut federal spending in any appreciable way. GOP leadership has taken a strong stance against additional revenues.

Having failed to secure any actual spending cuts in the recent “fiscal cliff” deal, Ryan says that “the president got his additional revenues. So that’s behind us” indicating that more tax increases or other revenue generation proposals will be rejected and that only spending cuts will be considered going forward.

Sequestration was a device put forward by the White House that focused on $1.2 trillion in forced spending cuts over ten years to defense and domestic spending beginning with $110 billion in cuts in 2013.

Social Security, Medicaid, supplemental security income, refundable tax credits, the children’s health insurance program, the food stamp program and veterans’ benefits will all be spared from cuts – everything else is going to get hit.