A senator trying to stop $500 billion in defense cuts from starting next January is calling on industry and the Pentagon to tell employees their jobs are in jeopardy, in order to force lawmakers to stop the cuts.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) issued the call yesterday, as sundry groups of lawmakers continued to talk behind closed doors about proposals to prevent so-called sequestration cuts from starting next January and lasting a decade. The politically unpopular spending reductions, which would take $55 billion from defense spending the first year, were triggered from the failure last year of a so-called Super Committee of lawmakers to agree to $1.2 trillion in deficit savings. Democrats and Republicans remain at odds over alternate federal-budget-trimming plans to replace the sequestration cuts.
“We will do nothing until the layoff notices come,” Graham told reporters, referring to members of Congress. “We’re going to sit up here and look at each other and say, ‘Pay for it this way. No, pay for it that way.’”
In the meantime, defense contractors are trying to make sense of how the sequestration cuts would impact them. Companies are frustrated that the Pentagon has not shared details about exactly how the sequestration cuts–which are intended be made across-the-board to many parts of the Pentagon budget–would be applied, speakers at two Washington conferences said yesterday. Contractors could issue layoff notices shortly before the November elections, because the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act requires a 60-day notice to employees of pending layoffs.
“I am calling on the business community to release these layoff notices, issue the layoff notices in compliance with the statute as soon as possible,” Graham told reporters yesterday at the Capitol. “I’m calling on the Pentagon to inform their civilian employees that this is the law of the land and you’re going to lose your job come January.”
He predicted such a move would spur constituents to pressure lawmakers to stop sequestration.
“That will be the only thing that pushes this back,” Graham said, likening the resulting sequestration push-back to the military-base-closure process “on “steroids.”
He called the Budget Control Act of 2011, which required the sequestration cuts to be made if the Super Committee failed, as “stupid.”
“We wrote this stupid law, we just have (to) feel the effect of this stupid law,” Graham said. “Don’t hide us from our stupidity.”
Graham, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), has been advocating for Republicans to consider allowing new revenues in an alternate deficit-cutting deal if Democrats agree to reform entitlement programs such as Social Security. The South Carolina senator said “no one’s going to raise taxes on our side,” but said GOP lawmakers could agree to raise revenues by closing loopholes in the tax code.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the SASC’s ranking Republican, and Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), a committee member, both said yesterday they could live with some revenue-raising in a new deficit deal.
Ayotte appeared at two events yesterday at which she warned about the impact of sequestration cuts on the defense industry and called for Congress to craft an alternate plan before the November elections. The gatherings were sponsored by TechAmerica, a technology industry trade group, and the Brookings Institution, a non-partisan think tank.
“I don’t think what you’re hearing from Republicans is, ‘Oh we’re not willing to consider some revenue,’” Ayotte said at TechAmerica. “What we’re not willing to (do)–(though) I can’t speak for all my colleagues–is increase tax rates to make it more difficult for economic recovery across the board, when we all know what needs to be done is fundamental tax reform. So I think this is very solvable but what we need is people to come to the table right now.”
McCain told reporters yesterday he and Graham have met about anti-sequestration options with SASC Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.). The Arizona senator predicted the sequestration cuts will not be made.
McCain said roughly “27 different gangs” of lawmakers are meeting about alternate deficit-cutting plans, though he said he is “not a member of any gang.” Ayotte said she has been in “regular contract” about fighting sequestration with House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.). She supports preventing the first two years of sequestration cuts to “put ourselves in a more responsible position and give some breathing room,” she said.
McCain said he is opposed to a proposal, which congressional leaders reportedly are considering, to delay the start of the sequestration cuts until March 2013 to give more time for negotiations while also temporarily extending expiring tax cuts.
“It’s kicking the can down the road and I would not agree with it,” he said at the Capitol.