Congress is back at work, weighing a temporary federal budget as well as alternatives to so-called sequestration budget cuts yesterday, when Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney also warned against cutting funding for weapons programs on the campaign trail.
The Republican-led House is set to take up two bills this week that tie in to the defense budget: a continuing resolution (CR) to fund the Pentagon and rest of the federal government for the first half of the next fiscal year, and legislation requiring President Barack Obama create a plan to replace the sequestration cuts. The House Rules Committee will meet today to prepare both bills for floor debate.
The CR is expected to pass the House this week and the Democratic-controlled Senate next week with little problem. The CR is a different than similar stop-gap temporary budgets Congress has passed in recent years, which simply extended the budget at the beginning of a new fiscal year at the previous year’s levels. Instead, the new CR poised for House action would adhere to FY ’13 funding levels written into the Budget Control Act of 2011–$1.047 trillion for the entire government–which is a 0.6 percent increase over levels in FY ’12, which ends Sept. 30. This level of funding would be less than what was in the House-passed defense appropriations bill for FY ’13. Under this CR, which would run until March 27, 2013, the Pentagon would not be allowed to start production of new weapons, enter into multi-year procurement contracts, or retire Air Force aircraft.
The other bill expected to hit the House floor this week is the National Security and Job Protection Act authored by Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), which faces opposition in the Senate. The legislation would require Obama to submit a plan to stop the sequestration budget cuts to Congress by Oct. 15. The bill also is intended to work with other pending legislation to prevent some or all of the sequestration cuts from being made.
The sequestration cuts are the $1.2 trillion in longterm government spending reductions–$500 billion of which would come from planned Pentagon spending–brought about by the Budget Control Act of 2011. Obama has called on Congress to agree on an alternate plan to prevent the sequestration cuts from starting next January, saying Democrats need to allow more spending cuts and Republicans should support adding more revenues.
Senators including Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and member Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said yesterday they continued sequestration deliberations during the August recess. Levin, for example, told reporters he received more data on revenue-generating measures that could be included in a new plan to replace sequestration.
Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who has pushed stalled legislation to prevent the first year of sequestration cuts, told reporters he has been in touch with House members about the National Security and Job Protection Act up for debate in their chamber.
“We’ve got to try to get this done,” Kyl said about stopping sequestration. “And if the administration can just ignore it, they’re not going to put any pressure on members to get things done.”
Romney, meanwhile, addressed defense budget cuts yesterday in a speech to the National Guard Association Convention in Reno.
The GOP candidate has been criticized for not providing more details on the campaign trail about his plans for the military. Still, he told the National Guard audience yesterday that because it was the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks he would not highlight the differences between his as Obama’s plans for the military and national security.
Romney told the crowd the drawdown of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan “must not be used as an excuse to hollow out our military through devastating defense budget cuts.”
“It is true that our armed forces have been stretched to the brink, and that’s all the more reason to repair and rebuild,” Romney said. “We can always find places to end waste. But we cannot cancel program after program, we cannot jeopardize critical missions, and we cannot cut corners in the quality of the equipment and training we provide to our men and women in uniform.”
Romney has called in the past for maintaining defense spending at 4 percent of gross domestic product, which would require significantly greater spending in the coming years than currently projected. He has spoken against the sequestration cuts as well as the $487 billion in defense reductions also brought about by the Budget Control Act of 2011. Obama has stood by those initial $487 billion in cuts but says he opposes sequestration.
Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, the Senate appears unlikely to take up the policy-setting defense authorization bill for FY ’13 before that fiscal year starts, Levin told reporters yesterday. He said the Senate could take up the legislation in the lame-duck session of Congress after the November elections and then work with the House–which already passed its version of the authorization bill–to reconcile the two measures. The Senate may not debate the defense authorization bill at length on the floor, Levin said, telling reporters senators could hash out amendments to the bill before the public Senate floor debate begins.