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"The idea was not that these would go into effect."
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A top White House official acknowledged on Sunday that President Barack Obama was the one to put forward "the design" of the forced federal budget cuts known as sequestration.
Obama has heaped blame on Republicans for allowing the across-the-board $85 billion cuts to go through, but economic adviser Gene Sperling admitted it was the White House that presented the basic framework -- even though no one meant for it to go through.
"Everyone knows that the president wanted an enforcement mechanism that included revenues on the most well-off," Sperling said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "The Republicans insisted that this be an enforcement mechanism that be on all spending cuts...it's most accurate that they did propose an all spending cut mechanism that would have this type of harmful impact."
He added, "The idea was not that these would go into effect, but that people of good faith would come back and compromise."
The cuts went into effect Friday.
"The president was overall right in that the idea of an across-the-board, all-spending cut was the idea of Republicans...but yes, we put forth the design of how to do that," Sperling said. He quickly noted that in the end, "we all did agree to this."
(h/t Weekly Standard)
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