The group running the ads received $8 million from the Koch brothers from 2009 to 2011. | AP Photos Koch-backed group: Obama's hyping

A Koch-backed group is airing ads starting Tuesday criticizing President Barack Obama for overhyping the impact of the $85 billion in automatic budget cuts - noting they amount to only 3 percent of federal spending - and attacking Congress for not responsibly dealing with the debt.

”President Obama calls sequestration a ‘meat cleaver’ that will ‘eviscerate’ government services,” a voiceover says in the ad, “ Three Pennies,” as pennies drop into a jar. “What is sequestration? A 3 percent cut in government spending. Three cents out of every dollar the government spends. We’re more than $16 trillion in debt, and the government wastes billions each year on duplicate programs. Americans have made tough choices and cut back. Washington refuses. Call Washington and ask them why it’s so hard to cut spending.”


The group, Public Notice, is officially nonpartisan but is run by a former George W. Bush administration official and received $8 million from the GOP-leaning Koch brothers from 2009 to 2011.

Public Notice said the size of the buy was in the mid-six figures. The ad will run until March 15.

Obama wants to include revenue from closing tax loopholes in any deal to replace the cuts, which will total $1.2 trillion over the next decade. Republicans want the replacement to stick with just spending cuts.

While a 3 percent budget cut is small, sequestration actually exempts the largest sources of government spending — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — from the cuts, placing a much larger burden on other programs. Public Notice, which has long called for entitlement reform, notes the sequester could be replaced by “smarter cuts.”

“Now that the political posturing is over, it’s time for Washington to come up with the best way to implement the sequester or offer smarter cuts to replace it,” Public Notice Executive Director Gretchen Hamel said in a statement.

“Finding just three cents on every dollar in the annual federal budget to replace sequestration isn’t ‘draconian’ or ‘drastic,’ — it’s the responsible thing to do. Considering we’re $16.6 trillion in debt and on our way to $20 trillion in debt in the next four years, Americans expect more from Washington than passing blame and demogoguing. If Washington can’t responsibly trim our bloated federal budget by 3 percent, they have no one to blame but themselves for the consequences.”