Congressman Michael Turner | Proudly Serving Ohio's 10th District

On March 1, 2013 arbitrary cuts in federal spending known as "Sequestration" proposed by President Obama will take effect. By law, sequestration imposes across the board cuts to federal discretionary spending accounts by nearly 10%. Those accounts include the Department of Defense and other key domestic discretionary programs. When President Obama requested another blank check from Congress to spend more money we didn’t have, while slashing our national security, I voted against it. I knew we would be right where we are today – trillions more in debt, thousands of jobs at risk at Wright-Patt, and no leadership on solving our government’s long-term spending problem.

In the summer of 2011 the president requested an increase to the federal debt limit. In response, Congress passed, without my support, and the president signed into law the Budget Control Act of 2011. This law established a supercommittee to find further cuts to federal spending. As a stipulation to the BCA, if the supercommittee failed to reach agreement by November of 2011 federal accounts would be subject to automatic across the board spending cuts or sequestration. Sequestration by law amounts to $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts over a ten year budget period, with nearly $85 billion slated to take effect this year.