Alexander on Sequester: Cut Budget to Protect Medicare

Sen. Lamar Alexander (WPLN/Daniel Potter)

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Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander is trying to deflect blame for the looming federal budget cuts toward President Obama. Alexander says the so-called sequester could be avoided if the president would just cut the budget another way.

And he argues some kind of budget cut is necessary, to keep Medicare from going broke a decade from now:

“If we don’t do that, you’re going to be very unhappy with your United States senator. If you get there in twelve years and there’s no money to pay your hospital bills, you’re going to look back and say ‘Well, what did you do about that twelve years ago?’ Now’s the time to take the steps to get the debt under control so Medicare will be able to pay hospital bills people are counting on.”

Some economists warn the sequester just replaces an eventual problem with an immediate one, by furloughing hundreds of thousands of federal workers, and potentially slowing the recovery to a crawl. When pressed, Alexander says if left unchecked, interest and entitlements alone could swallow the rest of the budget a decade from now.

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Alexander spoke after a press conference against barriers to fishing in the tailwaters of dams.