Obama: Sequestration Is ‘Dumb,’ It’s ‘Going to Hurt’ but ‘We Will Get Through This’

Posted on Mar 1, 2013

White House/Pete Souza

Braced for automatic budget cuts that he described as “dumb” and painful, the president said Friday, “I’m not a dictator” and “if Mitch McConnell or John Boehner say ‘I need to go to catch a plane,’ I can’t have Secret Service block the doorway, right?”

Sequestration, the across the board budget cuts that began taking effect Friday, is no longer something to be avoided. It’s a reality that the president blames on an unreasonable Congress. But, he says, the resiliency of the American people will prevail.

NBC News:

“We will get through this,” he said. “This is not going to be an apocalypse, I think, as some people have said. It’s just dumb. And it’s going to hurt.”

The president huddled Friday with leaders at the White House in a meeting largely considered to be a show of effort in advance of inevitable sequestration cuts.

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