Once dubbed the poison pill that no one would swallow, automatic federal spending cuts look like they may go into effect starting Friday.
Sequestration would slice $85 billion out of the federal budget. We recently asked US Senator Chuck Schumer about the situation. He believes the roughly 2 percent of budget cuts would set the economy back.
Schumer says, "The good news is that there is an alternative. A bunch of us have proposed closing some of these tax loopholes that never should have been there to begin with. They benefit a small narrow group of people and we could eliminate those and not do the cuts of sequestration."
Schumer also says ensuring that companies don't get tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas and cutting the outdated and large subsidies that oil companies get would help the nation avoid the across the board spending cuts. Schumer adds that Congress is notorious for waiting until the last minute to take action, like it did on the fiscal cliff deal at the end of last year.
