Well yes, cutting federal spending will most certainly help cause a recession.
I think we all can agree that we really have no way of knowing whether "what Obama did" (or failed to do) made the economy weaker, stronger, or mattered at all. It's not like we can run a control experiment.
Some general principles still do apply though: The budgets do need to be balanced, the national debt does need to be reduced. As you say, even (responsible) socialists do it. We cannot risk becoming other Greece - there's no Germany to pay for our sins.
Raising taxes is probably inevitable, because of the politics involved, but the harmful side-effect are obvious: "the rich" are not hiding their treasure in dark damp secret caves - the money is being invested in the economy. Taking it away, losing a good deal to the opportunity costs, transaction costs, misallocation and corruption, then returning it -.... if you step back and look at it with a disinterested eye, does it appear to be a rational activity at all?
(Sure, there is government spending that comes with a "positive multiplier". Building a bridge at the right time in the right place, stuff like that. The only problem: nobody knows, in advance, when and where these "right" things are - and afterwards, you can claim whatever you please: the money is gone, and nobody will ever learn what the same money would build or create if left in the hands of taxpayers in the first place)
We keep talking about "compromise", "balanced solution" etc - all very nice, but if you listen carefully, it takes on a surreal tinge lately. It is like a teenage daughter telling her frustrated dad: "OK, OK, I know maxing out your credit cards is kinda bad, but this is not just about spending - it is about revenues as well. Let's be responsible adults and reach a workable compromise: I will spend a little less every month, and you will get a second job, to help paying the debt off"
Except our collective "daughter" in Congress and White House thinks that "spending less" means not spending quite as much as you could spend in future, according to some artificial "projections". "You know, we could build a huge cannon by 2070, and blow apart Mercury (for blocking our sun, partially). But, as veritable fanatics of fiscal discipline, we resolve not to do it. Here, a trillion quadrillion dollar spending cut"!
And yes, any cut in government spending, however beneficial in the long term, will add short-term and local pressure on the economy: if any worker currently employed at the worst imaginable pork-barrel project gets his wages cut, that means, naturally, that he will spend less tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, the ripple going through every business that serves him, from the barber to the grocery shop. So? We should not do it now, because of the "risk of a recession"? OK. When should we do it? In some bright distant future when recessions are abolished by magic? Even though we keep doing the same very things - from loose monetary policy to bailouts for those who take excessive risks - that cause recessions in the first place?
Let's face it: spending cuts are necessary, and they need to be implemented now. Now is as good (and as bad) as any other time. Unfortunately, neither party has the will to face anything that does not benefit it politically, short-term.
(Oh yes, Republicans say a lot of right words these days. A few of them - on the tea party/libertarian fringe - even mean it. But where are the military spending cuts proposals? Why anyone would take seriously a "fiscal disciplnarian" who ignores the second-largest piece of the budget pie chart?)