The long-feared “sequestration” budget cuts may officially start constricting Pentagon spending today, after Democrats and Republicans in the Senate rejected each other’s plans yesterday to prevent or lessen the blow of the largely unpopular reductions.
President Barack Obama plans to meet with congressional leaders at the White House today, for their first bipartisan meeting on the $1.2 trillion in decade-long sequestration cuts to defense and non-defense spending, which Washington has been grappling with for a year and a half (Defense Daily, Feb. 28; Nov. 22, 2011). Many lawmakers and aides see no way they could reach a last-minute agreement on an alternative deficit-cutting package before midnight. Democrats are demanding new revenues through tax changes in a replacement plan and Republicans insist they already have relented enough by agreeing three months ago to increase taxes.
“You’re asking a question: How much more money do we want to steal from the American people to fund more government? I’m for no more,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters yesterday. On the other side of the Capitol yesterday, the Democratic-led Senate voted down dueling Republican and Democratic sequestration plans.
Obama’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) threatened yesterday to veto a Republican bill–which the Senate later rejected–to keep the $85 billion in fiscal year 2013 sequestration cuts in place but give the Pentagon and other federal agencies more flexibility to administer them. Under current law, the reductions are slated to cut plans, programs, and activity accounts (PPAs) across-the-board by a set percentage, which would be 13 percent for the Pentagon budget in FY ’13.
OMB said in a statement of administration policy that the bill, from Sens. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), “would protect tax loopholes for the wealthy and congressional pork barrel projects and would lock in severe cuts that threaten hundreds of thousands of middle class jobs and slash vital services for children, seniors, and our troops and military families.”
The White House further argued that “no amount of flexibility can avoid the fact that middle class families will bear the brunt of the cuts required by this bill.” It maintained: “There is no way to cut spending this dramatically over a seven-month period without drastically affecting national security and economic priorities.”
The bill from Toomey and Inhofe, the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), would grant the Pentagon more authority to transfer funding in its coffers. The measure also calls for capping the alternative cuts that can be taken from the Pentagon in FY ’13 at $42 billion. Under sequestration, the cut would be $46 billion, and made in an across-the-board manner.
The legislation would bind the administration to follow congressional spending limits in the FY ’12 defense authorization act, and allow a majority of Congress to overturn any alternative cuts put forth by the administration.
Inhofe argued his failed bill would help the Pentagon manage the cuts without giving the administration too much budgeting authority–which is something Republicans including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) feared the Inhofe-Toomey measure would do.
“All this does is say, well, if we have to make some changes from the across-the-board cuts, let’s make them consistent with the national defense authorization act,” Inhofe said. “In other words, all those weeks and months (of work on the authorization measure) by the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House Armed Services Committee would not be in vain.”
He said his failed bill would allow the military service chiefs to “massage” the cuts and “make changes…to go after programs that are not as significant and some that might otherwise be cut.”
In the House, appropriators also have considered granting the Pentagon more flexibility with the sequestration cuts by expanding the Pentagon’s power to reprogram funding it already has. That plan could be debated this month when Congress decides how to fund the federal government in FY ’13 after a temporary continuing resolution expires March 27.
The Senate yesterday shot down the Inhofe-Toomey bill by a 38-62 vote, with Republicans including SASC members McCain and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Kelly Ayotte (D-N.H.), and Susan Collins (R-Maine) joining Democrats in opposition. The chamber also rejected a Democratic bill from Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) via a 51-49 vote, which failed because 60 votes were required. The Senate has 53 Democrats and 45 Republicans, as well as two Independents who caucus with Democrats.
The OMB issued a statement in support of Mikulski’s bill, which calls for replacing the sequestration cuts this calendar year with $110 billion worth of new tax revenues and savings including $27.5 billion in future, multi-year defense cuts.
“The bill is consistent with the president’s balanced approach to reduce the deficit while supporting job creation, long-term economic growth, and protecting the most vulnerable,” the White House said about the bill intended to delay sequestration and give Congress more time to debate a long-term deficit-cutting plan.
Though some lawmakers have said sequestration would begin right after midnight last night, at the start of March 1, White House spokesman Jay Carney said yesterday the actual start of the reductions would come after Obama takes action during the day.
“My understanding is the law has a provision that requires the president to order the sequester on March 1, which is tomorrow,” Carney said yesterday. “And that means that it has to be done by 11:59 p.m.” on March 1.