The House easily passed a new government budget on Thursday that helps the Pentagon manage the new “sequestration” budget cuts, spurring military leaders to delay the process of furloughing civilian employees.
The House approved the “continuing resolution” (CR)–which contains a full defense appropriations bill–via a 318-109 vote. It garnered the support of the vast majority of House Republicans as well as House Armed Services Committee members on both sides of the aisle, with the exception of four Democrats on the panel: Reps. Niki Tsongas (Mass.), John Garamendi (Calif.), Coleen Hanabusa (Hawaii), and Jackie Speier (Calif.).
The CR previously passed the Senate on Wednesday via a 73-26 margin. It funds the government for the remainder of fiscal year 2013, which ends Sept. 30, and includes complete appropriations bills for defense, homeland security, commerce-justice-science, military construction-veterans affairs, and agriculture.
The CR keeps the controversial sequestration budget cuts that started March 1 and could tap $46 billion in defense spending through Sept. 30, and $500 billion over a decade. The bill includes $604.9 billion for a combined base defense budget and Overseas Contingency Operations war funding, compared to the FY ’12 level of $633.2 billion.
Having the defense appropriations bill in place gives the Pentagon more budgeting flexibility to deal with sequestration, because under a soon-to-expire CR the defense accounts were locked in at FY ’12 levels, creating shortfalls in some accounts and too much money in others. The new CR boosts operations and maintenance funding by $10.4 billion while reducing procurement and research and development accounts by $6.7 billion.
Shortly after the House passed the CR Thursday, the Pentagon announced it will delay plans to issue furlough notices to civilian employees for approximately two weeks.
“This delay will allow the (Defense) Department to carefully analyze the impact of pending continuing resolution legislation on the Department’s resources,” Pentagon press secretary George Little said in a statement. “We have not made any decisions on whether or not the total number of planned furlough days for Fiscal Year 2013 will change as a result of this delay. We believe the delay is a responsible step to take in order to assure our civilian employees that we do not take lightly the prospect of furloughs and the resulting decrease in employee pay.”
Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told lawmakers on Feb. 20 that the Pentagon may have to furlough the majority of its civilian workers. He was fulfilling a requirement to notify Congress 45 days in advance of potential furloughs. Pentagon Comptroller Robert Hale at the time said requiring roughly 750,000 civilians to take 22 days in unpaid leave until the end of FY ’13 would yield up to $5 billion in savings.
President Barack Obama is expected to sign the new CR into law, keeping the government running after the current CR expires March 27. With the threat to a government shutdown averted, some lawmakers want to exert more energies trying to stop sequestration.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday that passing the CR “allows us to keep our focus where it belongs: replacing the president’s sequester with smarter cuts that help balance the budget, fixing our broken tax code to create jobs and increase wages, protecting priorities like Medicare, and expanding opportunity for all Americans.”
Boehner–who faults Obama for the sequestration cuts brought about by a law approved by both parties in Congress–told reporters Thursday he remains opposed to allowing new government revenues in an alternative plan to replace sequestration. His opposition to revenues has been a major sticking point in the debate over ending sequestration, while Democrats have resisted cuts to entitlement programs and domestic spending proposed by House Republicans.
The GOP-led House passed a longterm budget resolution Thursday, while the Democratic-run Senate continued to debate its competing version. The House plan calls for higher base defense funding than the Senate resolution does.
The Senate proposal, as approved by the Budget Committee, calls for ending the $500 billion in longterm defense sequestration cuts but keeping roughly half that amount–$240 billion–in other Pentagon reductions. The House plan, by contrast, would technically keep the sequestration cuts but says it has “approximately $500 billion more than will be available absent changes in the Budget Control Act,” referencing the law that created sequestration.