Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle blasted planned “sequestration” cuts to the defense budget yesterday but remained at odds over how to prevent them.
A week after the GOP-led House passed a bill to prevent the first year of so-called sequestration cuts to the Pentagon’s budget next year, it remains unclear if Democrats and Republicans can agree on any plan before the sequestration cuts begin next January (Defense Daily, May 11).
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), ranking member on the House Budget Committee, lamented to reporters yesterday that the House refused to take up an alternative Democratic plan last week to prevent the sequestration cuts, which could reduce Pentagon spending by $500 billion over nine years. The Democrats’ plan called for cutting other parts of the federal budget not impacted by sequestration as well as raising taxes and ending some government subsidies.
The House instead passed a Republican plan–crafted by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and rebuked by Democrats controlling the Senate–that would replace the first year of sequestration cuts with reductions to spending on areas including food stamps, health care, and education.
“When it came right down to it our Republican colleagues were more interested in protecting tax breaks and tax loopholes for the very wealthy, rather than protecting defense spending,” Van Hollen said on a conference call yesterday arranged by the Democrat-friendly National Security Network advocacy group.
Van Hollen noted that House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.)–a supporter of the House-passed anti-sequestration plan–said last year he could support increasing government revenue to protect defense spending, a comment he has backtracked from.
“Well that’s what the Democratic alternative plan did,” Van Hollen said. He argued the Democrats’ bill– which House leadership did not allow the chamber to vote on–would have been “balanced,” as opposed to the Republicans’ “lopsided approach.”
Republicans have argued vehemently against the sequestration cuts while remaining opposed to new taxes.
The $500 billion in nine-year sequestration cuts to defense were triggered when a super committee of lawmakers were unable to reach a plan to cut the federal deficit last year. Those cuts, which lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are trying to prevent, would come on top of a $487 billion reduction to the Pentagon’s 10-year spending already imposed by the Budget Control Act of 2011.
HASC Readiness subcommittee Chairman Randy Forbes (R-Va.) planned to start a series of at least 12 town hall meetings on the perils of defense budget cuts last night.
The National Security Network said it arranged yesterday’s call with Van Hollen and former Assistant Defense Secretary for Public Affairs Doug Wilson to preempt Forbes’ tour.
“It is important to avoid sequester, but it is important to avoid it by stepping up to the plate and for Congress to do what it needs to do in order to realize these cuts without harming national security and making sure that we do not throw other domestic constituencies under the bus either,” said Wilson, who retired a month ago. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, similarly, said last week that while he was “grateful to the House for recognizing the importance of stopping sequestration,” the plan to take the funds from programs for poorer citizens is not politically viable and pursing it will only lead to “gridlock” in Congress.
Meanwhile, Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Ranking Member John McCain (R-Ariz.) said at a Washington think tank yesterday that he wants President Barack Obama to help craft a resolution to sequestration. Obama wants lawmakers to agree on a broad deficit reduction plan, instead of tinkering with the sequestration cuts, and the White House threatened to veto the House-passed bill.
McCain joined with other Republican senators early this year in offering legislation, which Senate Democrats have not moved, that would offset the first year of sequestration cuts through other federal spending reductions and not include new taxes (Defense Daily, Feb. 3).
“A number of us in Congress have offered proposals to avoid sequestration, but we do not have a monopoly on good ideas,” McCain said yesterday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). “We want to sit down with the president and work out a bipartisan deal, but the president refuses to engage….Unless the president gets engaged on this issue, he will preside over the worst hollowing-out of our armed forces in recent memory.”
Multiple congressional panels, meanwhile, are preparing to advance their versions of the FY ’13 defense budget. The House Rules Committee has set a deadline of 10 a.m. today for proposed House floor amendments to the version of the policy-setting defense authorization bill the HASC passed last week. House floor debate is slated to being Wednesday. The House Appropriations Committee also plans to approve the budget-setting defense appropriations bill on Thursday. Both bills add billions of dollars in spending on weapon systems to Obama’s defense proposal.
The SASC plans to mark up a version of the authorization bill next week that is more modest than the HASC’s version.
McCain, speaking at CSIS about U.S. interests in Asia yesterday, slammed Pentagon proposals to retire seven Aegis cruisers earlier than planned and delay the purchase of vessels including a large-deck amphibious ship, a Virginia-class submarine, two Littoral Combat Ships, and eight high-speed transport vessels.
“Cuts to our naval capabilities such as these, without a plan to compensate for them, only put our goals in the Asia-Pacific region at greater risk,” McCain said.