Congressman Thornberry Speaks about Sequestration
By: Ann Arnold
Updated: February 19, 2013
Congress is in recess despite a looming deadline to avoid 85 billion dollars in automatic spending cuts. Lawmakers have just over a week to avoid self imposed across the board spending cuts.
Representative Mac Thornberry is in Wichita Falls talking to residents about what these cuts will mean for us.
"A week from Friday these across the board cuts come in half from defense and half from non defense, but this will affect all sorts of things not in defense, including agriculture, FAA, medical research, bureaus of prisons. It's a dumb way to cut, and yet we've got this huge debt we can't walk away from making spending cuts," Thornberry said.
This deadline and these cuts are self imposed. Lawmakers agreed to them to force the government to cut the nation's debt, always thinking they'd come up with an alternative plan. So far, neither side has proposed a solution that appears likely to pass.
