As the new congressional committee charged with finding up to $1.5 trillion in additional federal budget cuts met yesterday, a Republican member said he will leave the bipartisan panel if it weighs more Pentagon cuts.
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), a military-budget supporter who is not running for reelection, said yesterday he told the deficit panel he would quit if it tries to cut defense by more than already mandated in the first wave of the deficit-cutting deal the White House approved last month.
“When we had our first meeting, the chairman asked, ‘Well, what do we think about defense spending?’ And I said ‘I’m off the committee if we’re going to talk about further defense spending,’” Kyl said. “First we did discretionary spending in (a first round of cuts in) the budget act, second, defense was half of that, even though it isn’t half the budget, obviously. And, third, we can’t afford anymore and that’s what your defense secretary, past and current, and others, have said. So we’re not going there.’”
Kyl joined five other hawkish Republicans at a “Defending Defense” event on Capitol Hill yesterday, shortly after the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction held its first public meeting yesterday morning.
Deficit panel Co-chair Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), during open comments of the morning organizational meeting, called for the six Republican and six Democratic members to be “open to compromise and the ideas and viewpoints of others.”
“That’s why I’ve been so glad that as we have gotten this process off the ground over the last few weeks, committee members have refrained from drawing lines in the sand or carving out areas that can’t be touched,” she said at the deficit panel meeting. “As we move forward, I hope we can continue to not allow ourselves to be boxed in or pigeonholed by special interest groups or partisans or media or pundits, and we are allowed the room to come to a balanced agreement.”
Shortly afterward, Kyl made clear at the Defending Defense event–sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, The Heritage Foundation and the Foreign Policy Initiative–he will resist Pentagon spending reductions beyond the $350 billion in defense-related cuts over 10 years already approved by the Budget Control Act of 2011. Other event attendees included Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Reps. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), and Allen West (R-Fla.).
The new debt-reducing law, which President Barack Obama signed Aug. 2, calls for the deficit panel to find up to $1.5 trillion in additional long-term government-wide savings by Nov. 23. If it can’t craft a plan that passes the full Congress by Dec. 23, a sequestration process would trigger automatic long-term cuts of $1.2 trillion starting in 2013, with half coming from the Pentagon budget.
Because the panel is divided evenly between Democrats and Republicans, observers predict it will fail if the two sides can’t compromise on sensitive topics including defense spending, entitlements, and new taxes.
Observers quickly reacted to Kyl’s comments. Steve Ellis, vice president of the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense, argued Kyl’s “take-his-ball-and-go-home strategy certainly isn’t in the spirit of putting everything table” and also “defies logic.” That’s because if Kyl can’t get the support of at least one panel Democrat to leave the defense budget uncut, the sequestration process would trigger $600 billion in cuts to a category of defense defined mainly as the Pentagon budget.
Kyl said yesterday he wants those automatic defense cuts waived under such a sequestration.
The deficit panel will hold its first official hearing next Tuesday, when it will hear testimony about the history of the nation’s debt from Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf.
During yesterday’s deficit panel meeting, members did not delve far into specific topics such as the defense budget.
Member Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), though, called for “ending military adventurism” while making “smart and compassionate budget cuts” that do not slash “essential services like public education…safety nets and earned benefits like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.”
Co-chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) in his opening comments cited Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen’s warning that the “single biggest threat to our national security is our debt.”
“In interest payments alone, we are enabling China to buy two jet fighters a week,” Hensarling said. “Is it not our public duty to respond to this kind of warning with the same alarm and resolve that would be summoned to defeat any other threat to our nation?”
Also yesterday, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), in its first day of hearings following the August congressional recess, heard from former Joint Chiefs of Staff leaders about the future of the military 10 years after the Sept. 11 attacks.
HASC Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) argued the Pentagon “has already absorbed more than its fair share of cuts” before any additional cuts coming from the deficit panel or sequestration process.
He said he is concerned about the impact further cuts would have on the nation’s security and economy.
“Cuts to our military defense, either by eliminating programs or laying off soldiers comes with an economic cost,” McKeon argued. “While the U.S. military is the modern era’s greatest champion of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it’s time that we focus our physical restraint on the driver of the debt instead of the protector of our prosperity.”
Defense cuts proposals in recent years, he maintained, have been based “on budgets rather than on strategic needs.”
Former vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, retired Navy Adm. Edmund Giambastiani, gave a dire depiction of what would happen if the sequestration process is triggered and $600 billion in additional defense cuts are made.
“Huge cuts to defense spending, combined with little to no analysis of their impact on our overall national security, would have devastating consequences, something I think is akin to performing brain surgery with a chainsaw,” Giambastiani told the HASC.
He argued the deficit-cutting debate is “nothing less than determinative of what our role in the world will be in the future,” questioning if the United States will continue to be a “global superpower and a force for good” or “become one amongst many, forfeiting both the freedom of action and leadership role in the world.”