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2011,It was the first time in history that a party tried to attach any conditions to increasing the debt limit. Republicans were threatening to not pay our nation's bills, money already spent and send our country into default while demanding huge spending cuts and refusing to consider new revenues. They refused to raise the debt limit without dollar-for-spending but with no revenue to reach that target and couldn't agree on several hundred billion dollars in targeted spending cuts.

May 16, 2011 the US went into technical default but the Treasury Dept was able to string things along for a couple of weeks. The real problem would hit on August 1st.

May 31, 2011, the House Republicans voted no, all 236 of them, on Obama's request for a "clean" debt-limit increase (not hold paying our bills hostage to spending cuts).

More months pass with Republicans still screaming for deep cuts. It looked more and more plausible that Republicans were actually irresponsible enough to push our country into default. With a bomb held over the White House's head, the WH proposed the sequester, the least bad option. What would kick in would be not only automatic budget cuts but also automatic revenue increases.

July 31, 2011, John Boehner sent a PowerPoint presentation to his conference and the final slide made the case for sequestration.

Aug 2, 2011, right up to the wire, the Budget Control Act of 2011 was passed by House Republicans, 218 voting yes. Boehner was very happy, "getting 98% of what he wanted".

Feb, 2013. We've gotten around $2.2 trillion in deficit reduction; Dems have agreed to about $1.5 trillion in spending cuts; Republicans have agreed to about $700 billion in revenues, twice as much in cuts than revenue.

From: Fix the sequester

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