Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said yesterday he’d “take whatever the hell deal” lawmakers can come up with to delay or prevent so-called sequestration budget cuts.
The $500 billion in decade-long reductions to planned defense spending will start in January if congressional Democrats and Republicans cannot agree on a plan to replace sequestration with other government savings.
Many lawmakers and President Barack Obama oppose sequestration, but cannot agree on an alternate plan.
Panetta had previously joined Obama in calling for Congress to agree on a new wide-reaching deficit-cutting plan to replace sequestration, which would impose across-the-board cuts of $1.2 trillion to planned defense and non-defense spending.
Yet yesterday, a frustrated Panetta told Pentagon reporters he’d take anything from Congress. That could include a plan to delay sequestration until the end of fiscal year 2013, which runs until Sept. 30, 2013–something Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said last week he could accept.
Congress is in recess and won’t return to Washington until after the Nov. 6 elections for a lame-duck session that could stretch into the final days of 2012.
“The problem now is that, you know, they’ve left town, and all of this has now been put off into the lame duck session,” Panetta said yesterday.
He argued “we cannot maintain a strong defense for this country if sequester is allowed to happen, number one.”
“But very frankly, just the shadow of sequester being out there continually is something that…basically creates a problem for us as we try to plan for the future,” he said. “We need stability. You want a strong national defense for this country? I need to have some stability. And that’s what I’m asking the Congress to do, give me some stability with regards to the funding of the Defense Department for the future.”