Democratic Utah Congressman Jim Matheson says sequestration or sweeping federal budget cuts that went into effect Friday are a collective failure of Congressional leadership in both parties.
Representative Matheson says everyone in Congress agrees that 85 billion dollars of spending needs to be cut from the federal budget, but he says sequestration is not the way to do it.
“I think this is a failure of Congressional leadership in both parties, because all they seem to be interested in is playing the blame game on each other instead of solving the problem,” Matheson told KUER. He says the indiscriminate cuts that come with sequestration only include about a third of the federal budget.
“If you really want to deal with the deficit you’ve got to put everything on the table. I hope Congress does its job, sits down collectively, and works in a bipartisan way to take on that larger task,” he said.
Matheson told House Majority Leader Eric Cantor that Congress should be working five days a week rather than four until this issue is settled.
