Rep. Amash: Efforts to dodge sequester show it was a 'phony plan'

Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) says efforts by Congress to avoid the looming automatic budget cuts, which will require a $109 billion reduction in 2013 spending, shows that sequestration was always a "phony plan" to justify raising the debt ceiling last year.

According to a report from Michigan Radio, Amash said he always suspected that Congress would "raise the debt ceiling, borrow more and then later on say 'oh, we don't want to do these cuts,' and that's exactly what's happening."

The sequester was created by last year's Budget Control Act as an incentive to push a bipartisan "supercommittee" to agree on a plan for reducing the budget deficit. Under the law, that committee's failure triggered $1.2 trillion in across-the-board cuts over the next decade, set to begin in January.

Both parties have expressed an interest in avoiding those cuts — particularly defense cuts that even the Obama administration has said would hurt the Department of Defense.

But according to the Michigan Radio report, both Amash and Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.) said defense cuts should be part of the plan. Huizenga said he plans to examine a report from the Obama administration on how it would implement the cuts in 2013.

"I think there's a higher probability that that brings a dose of reality to what it looks like," he said. "But now some of it may be the right thing to do moving forward."

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