Thread deleting

“There was an insistence on the part of Republicans in Congress for there to be some automatic trigger,” Lew told the Tampa Tribune while campaigning there. “It was very much rooted in the Republican congressional insistence that there be an automatic measure at the end.”

Per Bob Woodward:

At 2:30 p.m. on July 26, 2011, Lew and White House congressional-relations chief Rob Nabors visited Senate Democrat Leader Harry Reid, amid that summer’s negotiations with Republicans over raising the debt ceiling.

As Woodward wrote on page 326 of his book:

“We have an idea for a trigger,” Lew said.

“What’s the idea?” Reid asked skeptically.

“Sequestration.” . . .

That’s the beauty of a sequester, they said, it’s so ridiculous that no one ever wants it to happen. It was the bomb that no one wanted to drop. It actually would be an action-forcing event.

“I get it,” Reid said finally.

“Obama personally approved of the plan for Lew and Nabors to propose the sequester to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid,” Woodward wrote. “Nabors has told others that they checked with the president before going to see Reid.”