Spending Cuts | featured news

Tens of thousands of anti-austerity demonstrators took to the streets of Athens on Wednesday as unions staged a general strike to protest government spending cuts and tax hikes, which some predict will push unemployment to an alarming 30 percent. Police said up to 40,000 people were participating in two separate marches in central Athens that were so far peaceful.

Ten days before a new deadline for broad, automatic government spending cuts, the sense of urgency that surrounded other recent fiscal crises is absent. Government agencies are preparing to absorb an $85 billion hit to their budgets, and politicians, at least for now, seem willing to accept the consequences...

President Obama, back from his three-day golf getaway, on Monday made use of his bully pulpit, while Congress remains out all week, to turn up the pressure for a bipartisan agreement to avoid indiscriminate across-the-board budget cuts that will otherwise hit March 1.

Top Senate Democrats have prepared a plan to slice the Pentagon's budget by $3 billion a year in an attempt to avoid far steeper cuts this year that defense hawks warn would cripple the military.

Congressional Democrats and Republicans appeared far apart Sunday on a deal to avert $85 billion in federal spending reductions next month, with a top House Republican saying the cuts appear “inevitable.” The automatic cuts, known as sequester, kick in March 1 because the parties have failed to agree on a less-drastic plan to cut the federal budget and deficit.

The Pentagon will have to cut the size of U.S. military forces for the second time in as many years if across-the-board spending reductions of $470 billion over 10 years take effect March 1, the top U.S. military officer said on Saturday

"Here's the dilemma: we do have a long-term debt problem, but that doesn't mean that austerity now is the right response," Clinton said, adding that Republicans only support austerity measures "when Democrats are president." An affirmative plan on how to spark job creation and growth is a more powerful argument to the public than the GOP's advocacy for spending cuts and downsizing government, he contended.

President Barack Obama told fellow Democrats from the House of Representatives on Thursday he is willing to agree to a "big deal" with Congress on spending cuts and tax reforms to end the fiscal uncertainty over the U.S. deficit.

Top Republican lawmaker John Boehner said on Wednesday that he would oppose any delay in the automatic budget cuts that are set to kick in March 1, without other spending cuts and reforms.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday will propose that Congress pass a small package of spending cuts and tax reforms to put off the "harmful consequences" of huge automatic spending cuts known as the "sequester" for a few months, a White House official said.