Sen. Lamar Alexander was on Fox News Sunday, offering comments on the sequester.
Alexander was interviewed by Shannon Bream, host of "America's News HQ."
During the brief segment, Alexander continued leveling blame toward President Barack Obama, repeating the line that Obama owned the sequester and had shown a "complete failure of leadership" in efforts to find compromise in the months of debate surrounding it. On Friday, $85 billion in automatic cuts were ordered into effect.
When asked if he regretted voting for the Budget Control Act of 2011—which set in motion the sequence that allowed the automatic budget cuts to kick in—Alexander said he had no second thoughts.
"No I don't regret voting for it because it gave us $2.2 trillion of spending reductions," Alexander said. "The only thing I regret is that we're not able to focus on the real problem. The sequester's focused and these reductions are focused on the part of the budget that's pretty much under control … The part that's not under control—and is growing at the rate of 2 or 3 percent, two or three times inflation—is the mandatory spending increases. So that's the only regret I have .... he won't focus on that, and we can't get that done."
Asked why he thought Republicans had taken public blame for the sequester, Alexander said he wasn't sure.
"I wish I could give you an answer for that," he said.
