Automatic spending cuts set to hit Jan. 2 would be "deeply destructive to national security, domestic investments, and core government functions," the White House said Friday in a report that offers agency-by-agency details of the budgetary damage.
The Pentagon would be forced to delay equipment purchases and repairs, trimming services for military families and compromising the readiness of units not actively deployed, the report said.
In neighborhood schools, class sizes would go up, after-school programs would go down and "children with disabilities would suffer." And the ranks of FBI officers, Border Patrol agents, air-traffic controllers and food-safety inspectors would be "slashed."
Overall, the spending cuts, known in Washington as budget "sequestration," would take a 9.4 percent bite out of defense programs and reduce spending on domestic initiatives by 8.2 percent. Medicare and Social Security benefits, as well as many programs for the poor, would be protected. Still, the report says, the impact would be "devastating."
"The Administration does not support these cuts, but unless Congress acts responsibly, there will be no choice but to implement them," the report says.
The report is likely to fuel an already heated campaign-trail debate over who is to blame for the automatic cuts, as well as how best to avoid them.
Bipartisan majorities in both chambers of Congress voted to implement the sequester as part of a deal struck last summer to raise the federal debt limit. Sequestration was conceived as a bludgeon to force Congress to come up with a plan to reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years. If Congress failed - which it so far has - the money would be skimmed off the top of virtually every agency budget, split evenly between domestic programs and the military.
Both Democrats and Republicans now want nothing to do with the cuts. But they can't agree on how to replace them with a more rational deficit-reduction strategy - nor how to handle other automatic policy changes and tax increases that threaten to suck $500 billion out of the economy next year, potentially throwing the nation back into recession.
Republicans want to keep current tax rates for all Americans and squeeze domestic programs harder in order to protect defense. Democrats reject that approach, arguing that taxes should go up for the wealthiest Americans and that the Pentagon must shoulder its share of cost-cutting.
The Pentagon would be forced to delay equipment purchases and repairs, trimming services for military families and compromising the readiness of units not actively deployed, the report said.
In neighborhood schools, class sizes would go up, after-school programs would go down and "children with disabilities would suffer." And the ranks of FBI officers, Border Patrol agents, air-traffic controllers and food-safety inspectors would be "slashed."
Overall, the spending cuts, known in Washington as budget "sequestration," would take a 9.4 percent bite out of defense programs and reduce spending on domestic initiatives by 8.2 percent. Medicare and Social Security benefits, as well as many programs for the poor, would be protected. Still, the report says, the impact would be "devastating."
"The Administration does not support these cuts, but unless Congress acts responsibly, there will be no choice but to implement them," the report says.
The report is likely to fuel an already heated campaign-trail debate over who is to blame for the automatic cuts, as well as how best to avoid them.
Bipartisan majorities in both chambers of Congress voted to implement the sequester as part of a deal struck last summer to raise the federal debt limit. Sequestration was conceived as a bludgeon to force Congress to come up with a plan to reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years. If Congress failed - which it so far has - the money would be skimmed off the top of virtually every agency budget, split evenly between domestic programs and the military.
Both Democrats and Republicans now want nothing to do with the cuts. But they can't agree on how to replace them with a more rational deficit-reduction strategy - nor how to handle other automatic policy changes and tax increases that threaten to suck $500 billion out of the economy next year, potentially throwing the nation back into recession.
Republicans want to keep current tax rates for all Americans and squeeze domestic programs harder in order to protect defense. Democrats reject that approach, arguing that taxes should go up for the wealthiest Americans and that the Pentagon must shoulder its share of cost-cutting.