BOSTON (CBS/AP) – Congress and the White House have just four days to stop $85 billion in automatic spending cuts, known as the sequester.
WBZ NewsRadio 1030′s Carl Stevens reports
Massachusetts would lose tens of millions of dollars for education, environmental protection and child care if the automatic spending cuts took effect as scheduled March 1, and about 7,000 civilians who work in defense-related jobs could also face furloughs, according to a state-by-state analysis released by the White House on Sunday night.
At a rally in Boston against the looming cuts Monday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren called the sequester ?disastrous.?
Warren was joined by four Massachusetts congressmen at the event at ABCD headquarters off Tremont Street. ABCD helps administer the Head Start program.
?Kids (would be) thrown out of Head Start, massive cuts to small business loan guarantees,? Warren predicted if sequestration happens.
?Fewer seniors who need ?Meals on Wheels? could get the food they need. The list goes on and on. This sequester is about hurting people and that makes it wrong.?
The looming cuts were never supposed to happen. They were intended to be a draconian fallback intended to ensure a special deficit reduction committee would come up with $1 trillion or more in savings from benefit programs. It didn’t.
House Republicans have said reduced spending needs to be the focus and have rejected the president’s fresh demand to include higher taxes as part of a compromise.
