A group of defense-minded senators from both parties want Senate leaders to ensure lawmakers will be able to weigh any bipartisan proposals to stop so-called sequestration budget cuts before the end of the year.
Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) wrote in a Sept. 21 letter that they “believe it is important to send a strong signal of our bipartisan determination to avoid or delay sequestration and the resulting major damage to our national security, vital domestic priorities, and our economy.”
“Meeting this challenge will require real compromise, and we do not believe that Congress and the president can afford to wait until January to begin to develop a short term or long term sequestration alternative,” the six senators wrote to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) “All ideas should be put on the table and considered. Accordingly, we urge you to press between now and November the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation to score any bipartisan proposals forwarded to them so that Congress may evaluate these plans.”
The sequestration cuts are the politically unpopular $1.2 trillion in longterm government spending reductions–$500 billion of which would come from planned Pentagon spending–that will start next January if lawmakers cannot agree to an alternate deficit-cutting plan.
Congress recessed over the weekend and does not plan to return to Washington until after the Nov. 6 presidential election, when a lame-duck session of Congress will run until late December.
Levin and McCain, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), have been telling reporters that they had been discussing alternatives to sequestration, as are multiple other clusters of lawmakers. Yet no proposals have been endorsed by both parties and debated publicly. Democrats have resisted Republican proposals to offset the first year of sequestration cuts through federal workforce reductions or by slashing spending on areas including health care and food stamps.
The six senators wrote to Reid and McConnell that any “deficit reduction package should be long term and should provide as much certainty as possible for businesses and consumers.” They said they “are committed to working together to help forge a balanced bipartisan deficit reduction package to avoid damage to our national security, important domestic priorities, and our economy.”