The head of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) joined with House Republicans, including the top defense budget person, in calling yesterday for reducing the federal workforce to fund a one-year reprieve from planned Pentagon budget cuts.
HASC Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) told congressional reporters the Down Payment To Protect National Security Act, which he introduced Wednesday, would delay the start of $1.2 trillion in longterm “sequestration” cuts to defense and domestic spending for a year. They are slated to start January 2013, per the Budget Control Act of 2011, because a congressional “super committee” failed last month to craft a plan to trim the nation’s spending by at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years.
“All I’m saying is let’s push this back, at least a year,” McKeon said. “We pay for it (with the legislation), and give some breathing room, some time to think about this to know what we’re really doing. We’ve tried to solve this budget problem that’s been accumulating for decades in one year….We just need a little…breathing room before we decimate our military.”
McKeon’s legislation calls for reducing the federal workforce, including civilians in the Pentagon, by 10 percent through attrition and then applying the savings to pay off the first year of sequestration cuts for both defense and non-defense categories. His office said a 10 percent reduction could be achieved over a decade by only hiring one federal bureaucrat for every three who retire. The workforce reduction, he estimates, would save $127 billion; he wants $110 billion to pay for the one-year sequestration delay and $17 billion to reduce the deficit.
“Our workforce, they’re going to have to tighten their belts and pull back and let people go,” he said.
McKeon said the Down Payment To Protect National Security Act had 25 to 30 so-sponsors as of yesterday afternoon, including House Appropriations Defense subcommittee Chairman C.W. “Bill” Young (R-Fla.).
Young, an original co-sponsor, joined a group of House Republicans at a press conference yesterday, where he highlighted the laborious work lawmakers and aides do to determine cuts to defense programs in appropriations bills. He talked of “hours and hours, days and days, weeks and weeks of going contract by contract, line by line, to find ways to reduce the funding without affecting readiness, without affecting the troops.”
Yet the sequestration cuts–which would slash $600 billion in defense spending on top of the $450 billion reduction already approved–would indiscriminately cut the Pentagon’s budget, he said.
“Sequestration works differently,” Young said. “You don’t have that personal touch. You don’t have that review that we would have as members of the committee. You would have a computer model of some kind (that) would go in and punch in a number, and…a number would come out, and that would be it.”
Young argued “national defense cannot be based on a political number, it can’t be based on what you think you can pass or can’t pass.”
“Your investment in national defense should be related specifically to what is the threat to our nation,” he maintained.
McKeon said he’s worked with Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who said yesterday they will unveil legislation next month intended to undo the plans for the sequestration cuts. The senators said they will identify $1.2 trillion in non-defense savings (Defense Daily, Dec. 15).
McKeon said he does not have the support now of any Democrats.
President Barack Obama said on Nov. 21, the day the super committee announced defeat, that he would “veto any effort to get rid of those automatic spending cuts to domestic and defense spending.” He said he wanted congressional Democrats and Republicans to agree on a large-scale deficit-cutting plan. Observers have different opinions on whether that veto threat would apply to McKeon’s legislation and the the plan the GOP senators are crafting.