WASHINGTON -- In the midst of a partisan war over funding the government, one House Democrat fumed Monday night that his party leaders aren't fighting harder to reverse sequestration.
"I hate that part of this," the lawmaker said.
The government-funding bill going back and forth between the House and Senate reflects the automatic spending cuts that took effect in the spring. The sweeping cuts, which Congress agreed to in 2011, were never supposed to go into effect. But lawmakers failed to come up with an alternative deficit reduction plan -- the whole point of putting sequestration on the table in the first place -- and now that Republicans are focused on defunding the Affordable Care Act, the push for replacing the cuts has moved to the back burner.
This House Democrat, who requested anonymity to speak freely about the debate, said he's tried to talk to his leadership about the need to do more to replace sequestration with smarter cuts, but to no avail. Tensions appeared to have escalated over the matter.
"I told [one Democratic leader] to go f*ck himself," he said. "I said, Jesus Christ, we've been waiting on this goddamn thing for months."
The response? "According to leadership, we have to be united," the lawmaker said. "They ask, 'Are you going to be the ones to shut down the government?'"
Sequestration has been wreaking havoc on all kinds of crucial projects and vulnerable populations since it took effect. It's eaten into scientific research, booted low-income families off of Head Start, led to canceled food deliveries to elderly people, and could cost 100,000 federal jobs within the year.
Some Democrats wondered why Republicans haven't been more jubilant about the fact that they've effectively won the fight on sequestration, at least for now. By virtue of nobody taking action to replace it, the across-the-board cuts remain in place and the GOP can tout fiscal responsibility.
"It's baffling to me that the Republicans aren't claiming victory," Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) told The Huffington Post. "I've talked to a lot of them, privately, and a lot of them say, 'Yeah, this is what we want. We should call it a day.'"
Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) said neither party is focused on sequestration because Republicans have turned the fiscal debate into something more dire: risking a government shutdown and potentially a debt default.
"They have bigger things to fry," Honda said, shaking his head. "The game changed when they started to say, 'Oh, let's defund Obamacare.'"
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