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President Barack Obama on Saturday called on the US Congress to end the "reckless" and "dumb" budget cuts known as the sequester, and to adopt a plan of "smarter" cuts to fuel economic growth. Obama's weekly address comes after Congress on Friday overwhelming approved a bill putting furloughed air traffic controllers back on the job, thus undoing one of the most high-profile effects of the so-called sequestration, the $85 billion in automatic budget cuts that took effect March 1 and hit federal spending across the board.
"This week, the sequester hurt travellers, who were stuck for hours in airports and on planes, and rightly frustrated by it. And, maybe because they fly home each weekend, the members of Congress who insisted these cuts take hold finally realised that they actually apply to them too," Obama said. "Republicans claimed victory when the sequester first took effect, and now they've decided it was a bad idea all along. Well, first, they should look at their own budget. If the cuts they propose were applied across the board, the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) would suffer cuts three times deeper."
According to Obama, Congress on Friday "passed a temporary fix. A Band-Aid. But these cuts are scheduled to keep falling across other parts of the government that provide vital services for the American people. And we can't just keep putting Band-Aids on every cut. It's not a responsible way to govern."

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2013

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