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By JOSH LEDERMAN | Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) President Barack Obama is pulling out all the stops to warn
just what could happen if automatic budget cuts kick in. Americans are reacting
with a collective yawn.
They know the shtick: Obama raises the alarm, Democrats and Republicans accuse
each other of holding a deal hostage, there's a lot of yelling on cable news,
and then finally, when everyone has made their points, a deal is struck and the
day is saved.
Maybe not this time. Two days before $85 billion in cuts are set to hit federal
programs with all the precision of a wrecking ball, there are no signs that the
White House and Republicans in Congress are even negotiating. Both sides appear
quietly resigned to the prospect that this is one bullet we just may not dodge.
Still, for all the grim predictions, Americans seem to be flipping the channel
to something a little less, well, boring. They wonder, haven't we been here
before?
It's like deja vu, says Patrick Naylon, who runs an audiovisual firm in San
Francisco: "The same stuff, over and over again."
Texas native Corby Biddle, 53, isn't losing sleep over the cuts. No way the
government will let vital services collapse, he said as he visited tourist
attractions this week in downtown Atlanta.
"It will get resolved. They will kick the can down the road," Biddle said.
Usually, that's exactly what happens. Even the cuts behind the current panic
were originally supposed to kick in on Jan. 1 part of the fiscal-cliff combo
of spending cuts and tax hikes that economists warned could nudge the nation
back into recession. For all the high drama, lawmakers finally acted on New
Year's Day, compromising on taxes and punting the spending cuts to March 1.
And the blunt instrument known as the "sequester" that's set to deliver the
cuts? That too was the progeny of another moment of
government-by-brinksmanship, a concession that in 2011 made possible the grand
bargain that saved the U.S. from a first-ever default on its debt.
Even if the current cuts go through, the impact won't be immediate. Federal
workers would be notified next week that they will have to take up to a day
every week off without pay, but the furloughs won't start for a month due to
notification requirements. That will give negotiators some breathing room to
keep working on a deal.
But you can only cry wolf so many times before people just stop paying
attention.
"I know you guys must get tired of it," Obama told a crowd in Virginia on
Tuesday. "Didn't we just solve this thing? Now we've got another thing coming
up?"
Three out of 4 Americans say they aren't following the spending cuts issue very
closely, according to a Pew Research Center poll released this week. It's a
significant drop from the nearly 4 in 10 who in December said they were closely
following the fiscal-cliff debate.
Public data from Google's search engine shows that at its peak in December, the
search term "fiscal cliff" was about 10 times as popular as "sequestration" has
been in recent days. Even "debt ceiling," not a huge thriller for the
web-surfing crowd, maxed out in July 2011 at about three times the searches the
sequester is now getting.
"We're now approaching the next alleged deadline of doom. And voters, having
been told previously that the world might end, found it did not in the past and
are becoming more skeptical that it will in the future," said Peter Brown of
the nonpartisan Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
And let's face it: When it comes to policy issues that can really put an
audience to sleep, "sequestration" is right up there with filibuster reform,
chained CPI and carried interest.
For all the angst about layoffs, furloughs and slashes to government contracts,
the markets don't seem to be rattled, either. The Dow Jones Industrial Average,
after falling below 13,000 at the height of the fiscal cliff debacle, has been
buoyant ever since, spending the last month hovering just below 14,000.
"I shrug my shoulders because I don't believe any of those severe cuts will go
through," said Karen Jensen, a retired hospital administrator who stopped to
talk in New York's Times Square. "Life goes on as it has before."
But if the Obama administration hasn't managed to convince Americans these
spending cuts could be the real deal, it's not for lack of trying.
Each day the cuts grow nearer sees a new dire warning from the White House
about another government function that will take a hit if they go into effect
what White House chief of staff Denis McDonough has called a "devastating list
of horribles." Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano warned Monday that
her agency will be forced to furlough 5,000 border patrol agents. Education
Secretary Arne Duncan has said 70,000 preschool kids could be removed from Head
Start. Fewer air traffic controllers could mean 90-minute delays or longer in
major cities, and visiting hours at all 398 national parks are likely to be
cut, the administration has said.
The White House has circulated 51 reports one for each state, plus the
District of Columbia localizing the effects of the cuts. On Tuesday, Obama
took his cautionary tale to a shipbuilding site in Newport News, Va., calling
attention to how the cuts could impede the military. The White House says in
Virginia alone, about 90,000 civilians working for the Defense Department would
be furloughed, for a nearly $650 million reduction in gross pay.
"The president needs to stop campaigning, stop trying to scare the American
people, stop trying to scare the states," Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal of
Louisiana said Monday after governors from both parties met with Obama behind
closed doors. "Now's the time to cut spending. It can be done without
jeopardizing the economy. It can be done without jeopardizing critical
services."
The age-old Republican desire for a scaled-back federal government makes it
clear why, on the one hand, the GOP isn't scrambling to avert the cuts
especially when Obama insists on more tax revenues in any deal to turn them
off. On the other hand, Obama is banking on polls that show if the cuts go
through, Republicans are likely to bear most of the blame.
Both parties agree that if you're going to cut spending, an indiscriminate
mechanism like the sequester is the wrong way to do it. After all, the whole
point of the endeavor was to set in motion ramifications so unbearable that
lawmakers would be forced to come together and hash out a better plan before
the deadline.
Count James Ford of Louisville, Ky., among those still holding out hope.
"They'll come up with something to keep the thing going," he said. "They always
do."
___
Associated Press writers Jeff Martin in Atlanta, Jake Pearson in New York and
Dylan Lovan in Louisville, Ky., contributed to this report.