House Assistant Minority Leader James Clyburn (D-S.C.) on Monday predicted that Congress will not act until after the November elections to change the automatic spending cuts that are set to begin in 2013.
"What we're going to see in November after elections is the mother of all lame ducks. I do believe that so much of this will be worked out in the lame-duck session," Clyburn said on MSNBC's "Daily Rundown."
The House passed a bill on Thursday to replace the required cuts to defense and social programs with cuts to mandatory programs, but not one Democrat voted for it, and the measure is not expected to advance in the Senate.
Clyburn said he doesn't believe a deal with Democratic support to reverse the spending cuts will be reached until after the elections.
The sequester, set in motion by the failure of the supercommittee last year, requires $1.2 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade. Republicans want to lower the discretionary spending caps from last year's Budget Control Act for the next 10 years to reverse those cuts.
Clyburn said he believes Congress will eventually act to stop the automatic cuts for one year before agreeing on a plan for the next 10 years.
"We might do a one-year fix to give everybody time to work through certain things ... so I look for us to kick this issue on into a lame duck and do a one-year fix, while we get it all worked out for the long term," he said.
Sequestration is just one of the many big-ticket items facing Congress this year. A host of other tax provisions and rates are set to expire on Dec. 31, but election-year politics are expected to delay action until the end of the year.
