White House spokesman Jay Carney lamented during a press conference Tuesday that the media are not covering the sequester’s “impacts on real people.”
“The impacts are real,” Carney insisted during an exchange with Fox News’ Ed Henry, “and they effect real people. And I know that there hasn’t been a lot of coverage of the impacts on real people.”
Henry was pressing Carney on why the Obama administration had originally told reporters that the sequester would pull 5,000 border patrol agents off the border, only to announce Monday that the agency had reconsidered the decision for the short-term.
“The administration kept saying in February that there was no flexibility for these cabinet secretaries,” Henry pushed back. “Republicans were saying that they can move money around. You said, Secretary Duncan said, others said, ‘You can’t do that. There is no flexibility.’ Now you’re saying, ‘It’s a moving picture.’ … I thought there was no flexibility? I thought it was indiscriminate, across the board, that’s it.”
Carney answered by saying the law was inflexible, but “as time progressives and savings are made,” agencies are finding creative ways to prevent furloughs and other supposed threats from the sequester.
The White House has come under substantial fire for overstating the doom and gloom the March 1 sequester would bring with it.
A recent Rasmussen poll showed 45 percent of likely voters thought the sequester “didn’t cut enough,” with just 22 percent saying it cut too much.