Senate leaders working on a compromise to open the government and raise the debt limit hope to include flexibility in implementing sequestration cuts–which military leaders have begged for months –though the House has not discussed defense spending or increased flexibility in its negotiations, leaders said.
Speaking on the Senate floor late Tuesday morning, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said that a House Republican plan announced earlier in the morning would be dead on arrival. That plan, though it calls for dates approximately consistent with the Senate’s wishes for how long to temporarily fund the government and raise the debt limit, would also make some changes to the Affordable Care Act, would reduce the executive branch’s ability to take “extraordinary measures” to delay reaching the debt ceiling and would not offer and relief from sequestration.
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| Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) |
“This proposal they’ve sent gives the president of the United States, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, no flexibility whatsoever when sequestration kicks in on the 15 [of January],” Reid said. “We’re not asking to change those numbers–we agreed to those numbers, we voted here to approve those numbers. But they won’t even allow flexibility to allow the Department of Defense to shift that money around. I do not know how the defense of this country can go forward if they don’t have flexibility with losing $22 billion beginning Jan. 15. They don’t even give authority for that. This bill they’re sending over is doomed to failure, it’s doomed to failure legislatively and it is so awful, awful, awful for our country.”
Asked Tuesday afternoon if that sequestration flexibility was a must-have for Senate Democratic leadership when negotiating with the House, Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said while on his way to the Senate floor that “I hope that all Members believe this makes common sense. Give us some flexibility, if we have to face all of sequestration or some part of it.”
But House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday morning that on the House side, creating flexibility for implementing sequestration cuts “hasn’t been part of the discussion.”
“I want to make it clear: clearly, as you know, we don’t like the sequester. And clearly, the inflexibility of the sequester, you may have heard me talk about it, is one of its Achilles heels,” Hoyer said. But he added that defense wasn’t part of negotiations, which he said House Republicans have made about “ideological objectives rather than the country’s objectives.”
Reid said during his floor speech that the House Republicans’ still-evolving plan was “unproductive and a waste of time.” About three hours later, Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) postponed an update on the status of their negotiations, saying the Senate was on hold until they determined how the House would proceed with its plan.