White House Delivers Dire Warning About Automatic Cuts

With a real blizzard bearing down on New England, the policy wonks in the White House tried every which way they could on Friday to warn of the dangers of a different kind of storm.

The officials gathered reporters to describe what they believe will be the effects of sequestration, the automatic, across-the-board cuts to defense and domestic spending that will kick in on March 1 unless Congress and President Obama agree on a plan to put them off.

The string of adjectives was meant to be chilling: “large and arbitrary,” “severe,” “significant and harmful,” “very significant,” “blunt,” “mindless” and “extraordinarily troublesome.”

They didn’t stop with just adjectives, though. In their effort to pressure Republican lawmakers to agree to tax increases as well as spending cuts, White House oficials predicted specific consequences that Americans might not like.

Among them, they said: 70,000 young children will be kicked off Head Start early education programs; hundreds of federal prosecutors will be furloughed; food safety inspections will be cut back; 600,000 women and children will lose nutritional benefits; and small-business loans will be cut by about $500 million.

“The cuts would cause very significant disruptions that would be felt far and wide across the country,” said Danny Werfel, the federal controller of the Office of Management and Budge! t. “This is just the tip of the iceberg. We can’t plan our way out of these consequences or take steps to soften the blow.”

The briefing was the latest attempt by Mr. Obama’s White House to try and make sure that Republicans receive the blame for the consequences of the automatic cuts â€" if they happen.

Brendan Buck, a spokesman for the House speaker, John A. Boehner, tried to deflect that blame, noting that the House has already proposed alternative spending cuts as a way of avoiding the automatic ones. Mr. Obama has said he wants a mix of spending cuts and tax increases.

And a news release from the speaker’s office had the headline: “White House Outlines Devastating Consequences of President Obama’s Sequester.”

“The president is out of excuses,” Mr. Buck said in a statement e-maile to reporters. “We’re glad they’re laying out the devastating consequences of the president’s sequester, but the question remains: what are they willing to do to prevent it”

A spokesman for Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said in a message on Twitter after the White House briefing: “Words not used at WH briefing to describe sequestered budget cuts: ‘Here’s our plan.’ ”

At the White House, the economic officials conducting the briefing lamented the lack of flexibility in the sequestration law, which they noted was intentional.

“It was intended to drive Democrats and Republicans in Congress to compromise,” Mr. Werfel said. “It does not represent a responsible way to achieve deficit reduction.”

And yet, none of Mr. Obama’s aides were willing to s! ay that t! he president regretted signing the law that put the sequestration plan into effect. Jay Carney, the president’s press secretary, said the automatic cuts were the only way to avoid a default on the national debt in the summer of 2011.

“He could not let the country default for the first time, thus the sequester,” Mr. Carney said. “The whole point in its design was that it would never come to pass.”

Follow Michael D. Shear on Twitter at @shearm.