‘Bret Baier: Fair to say, but it was the president’s idea… You concede that point, right?
Jay Carney: What I will concede is that we were looking and the Republicans were looking for a trigger around which to build the mechanism to get us out of default possibility and the sequester was one of the ideas yes put forward, yes, by the president’s team.’
‘Panetta tried to shift the blame to Congress, saying the problem was that Congress had “left town” for the election: “All of this has now been put off into the lame-duck session.”’
Panetta won’t acknowledge what became crystal-clear from the research of Bob Woodward, that Obama himself was responsible for originating the idea of sequestration to play chicken with the GOP. Woodward wrote that Obama’s top deputies believed the prospect of massive defense cuts would compel Republicans to cave in and agree to a deficit-cutting grand bargain.
.
"Panetta won’t acknowledge what became crystal-clear from the research of Bob Woodward, that Obama himself was responsible for originating the idea of sequestration to play chicken with the GOP. Woodward wrote that Obama’s top deputies believed the prospect of massive defense cuts would compel Republicans to cave in and agree to a deficit-cutting grand bargain."
.