Frustrated Republicans argued yesterday Pentagon officials are partly responsible for the pending “sequestration” budget reductions, because they did not spell out the cuts’ dire consequences until this year.
Pentagon leaders including Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter returned to Capitol Hill yesterday for a second day of hearings before pro-military lawmakers to explain the consequences of the unpopular cuts, which are scheduled to start March 1 and tap $500 billion from decade-long defense spending.
The tone of yesterday’s hearing, before the Republican-led House Armed Services Committee (HASC), turned adversarial as lawmakers complained that, despite their warnings for more than a year, sequestration may start on March 1. The Pentagon brass–who were directed by the White House to not make specific contingency plans for sequestration until recently–noted it is still within Congress’ power to stop sequestration. Democrats and Republicans, though, continued to fight yesterday on Capitol Hill over how to do so.
“It would have been a lot easier for us to persuade Congress to act if we had that specificity (regarding sequestration’s impact on the military) months ago, instead of waiting for a couple weeks before the deadline,” HASC Seapower subcommittee Chairman Randy Forbes (R-Va.) said to Carter, Pentagon Comptroller Robert Hale, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, and the military service chiefs.
Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) joined Forbes’ critique, telling the military officials that while Congress is partly to blame for sequestration, “you guys have helped cause this as well.”
“You are part of the problem,” said Bishop, who rejoined the HASC last month in a committee-assignment shuffle.
He recounted how more-junior military leaders could not answer his questions last year about how their facilities would be impacted by the sequestration cuts. He said the “silence that was coming out of the Pentagon,” made it hard to explain to the public what sequestration would mean.
“Had you actually been doing something earlier about it, we may have been able to get (the) momentum that was extremely necessary,” Bishop said.
Carter retorted that he and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta have been saying for 16 months that sequestration would be “devastating.”
“We have been thinking about this for a long time, and worrying about this for a long time, and speaking out about it for a long time,” Carter said. He added that “it doesn’t take a genius to figure out the consequences of sequester.” That’s because the cuts are designed to indiscriminately cut Pentagon programs by a set percentage, which would be roughly 13 percent this fiscal year.
“So it’s not something that is mysterious,” Carter said.
Bishop replied that Carter’s answer was “not acceptable.” “You were not vigilant on this issue early enough,” the Utah Republican said, noting Pentagon planning did not start until December 2012. He said military officials were saying for too long that they hoped sequestration could be avoided. He also lamented that President Barack Obama said last year it wouldn’t happen.
“A lot of people took you at your word,” Bishop said.
Sequestration resulted from the Budget Control Act of 2011–which said if a special committee of lawmakers failed to craft a deal to cut the deficit by $1.2 trillion, as it did, the politically unpopular sequestration cuts would be made.
Pentagon leaders insisted until late last year that they were not planning for sequestration; Obama opposed the cuts and officials feared planning for them would make them seem more palatable. In early January, though, Pentagon leaders announced near-and-longer-term actions they are taking to gird for and manage the reductions, which would total $46 billion in just the final seven months of this fiscal year. The services have painted a dire picture of the cuts on Capitol Hill this week, saying the reductions would erode military readiness, spur massive furloughs, delay ship and aircraft maintenance, and force the delay or cancellation of planned weapon systems.
Obama confidently declared, when campaigning for a second term last year, that sequestration would not happen. Yet during his State of the Union address Tuesday night, Obama spoke with less confidence. He instead implored Congress to avert sequestration through steps including revenue-generating tax reforms. Republicans have been insisting they will only agree to stop sequestration through spending cuts (Defense Daily, Feb. 13).
Senate Democrats plan to offer a sequestration-avoidance plan today that includes new revenues that Republicans said they will not accept. The GOP-run House previously approved plans to stop sequestration with different cuts to domestic programs that Democrats want to protect. And HASC and Senate Armed Services Committee Republicans are again proposing a plan that garnered no traction last year to offset the first year of sequestration through reductions to the federal workforce.
Lawmakers seem increasingly pessimistic on Capitol Hill about the chances of the two parties agreeing to stop the cuts, which total $1.2 trillion over a decade when non-defense domestic cuts are included. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters Tuesday he thinks sequestration will kick in and he’s not “interested in an 11th-hour negotiation,” with Democrats.
In the House, Appropriations Committee Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) reportedly said yesterday he is crafting a government-funding bill for the final months of fiscal year 2013 that does not stop the sequestration cuts. The legislation includes a full-blown defense appropriations bill.
Democrats on the House panel released a report yesterday detailing the impacts of the defense and non-defense sequestration cuts.