The Senate compromise to reopen the federal government and lift the debt ceiling does not appear to grant any relief to government departments implementing rigid sequestration cuts, despite top Senate Democrats earlier in the week calling for flexibility in how the budget cuts are implemented.
On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said that “I do not know how the defense of this country can go forward if they don’t have flexibility” to strategically choose where to find budget cuts instead of making them equal across the board, which is something that military leaders have asked for since sequestration cuts kicked in this January.
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Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Tuesday afternoon that he would not call that flexibility a must-have in a deal with Senate Republicans or with the House, but he added “I hope that all Members believe this makes common sense. Give us some flexibility, if we have to face all of sequestration or some part of it.”
But Wednesday morning, as a deal between Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) solidified, it became apparent that the flexibility measure had fallen off the negotiating table.
The deal Reid and McConnell announced just after noon would send a group of Representatives and Senators to a budget conference to work out the details of a longer-term budget framework, which would be due mid-December; fund the government until Jan. 15; raise the debt ceiling until Feb. 7; provide backpay for federal workers who were furloughed during the government shutdown; and confirm the effectiveness of a provision in the Affordable Care Act that verifies income levels of anyone receiving subsidies for healthcare. The staggered dates provide a bit of breathing room at each stage along the way, allowing Congress to miss deadlines without creating another crisis. In this current fiscal impasse, if the House and Senate don’t sign a bill that the president can sign into law by Oct. 17, the United States will hit its borrowing limit and risks being unable to pay its bills on time.
The written compromise bill had not been released as of press time, though several senators expressed hope they could vote on the measure Wednesday evening.
The budget conference appears to be the next opportunity to tackle sequestration’s rigidity, as well as the deepness of the cuts. Reid said on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon that the conference committee would be “the appropriate place to discuss our differing views of the best way to chart a course for economic growth.”
There is a great range in views, however. Reid said Tuesday that “we’re not asking to change those numbers – we agreed to those numbers, we voted here to approve those numbers,” and rather the inflexibility in choosing how to create the mandated amount of savings was the problem.
But McConnell said on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon that keeping the budget cuts in place during shutdown negotiations ““has been a top priority for me and for my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle throughout this debate, and it’s been worth the effort.” He added that preserving the cuts as written in the law is “critically important” and that “we’re not going back on this agreement.”
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), on the other hand, said later in the afternoon on the floor that “we’ve heard Defense official after Defense official say that this is not a good thing for our national security. Hopefully the budget committee can achieve an agreement in conference committee to avoid that sequester.”
Nelson, who serves on both the armed services and the budget committees, added that it would take a lot of good will and trust between senators in the coming months, but if they could achieve substantive tax reforms by closing loopholes and more, then some of that money could lower rates for taxpayers, some could lower the national deficit, and some could replace the sequester “that is going to have such negative effects on the common security of this country.”
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) agreed during a floor speech that he wanted to get rid of sequestration altogether, saying, “We need to get rid of sequestration, and we need to do that in context of these budget negotiations.”