Senate Republicans pitched a plan yesterday for staving off the initial defense spending cuts triggered by failed budget talks, garnering praise from House Republicans but rebukes from Senate Democrats.
Sens. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and four other senators unveiled yesterday the Down Payment to Protect National Security Act, which like companion legislation in the House would prevent the first year of so-called “sequestration” cuts to defense and non-defense spending, worth roughly $110 billion.
“As Congress considers funding for the next fiscal year, we should at least be able to agree to one-year in targeted spending reductions, instead of the draconian, across-the-board cuts resulting from sequestration,” said the group, arguing federal employees make too much during this time of fiscal austerity.
The sequestration cuts “are a threat to our nation’s security,” McCain told reporters yesterday. He and Kyl are working with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).
The Senate bill is slightly different than the House version with the same name. Kyl’s group hopes to offset the sequestration cuts for one year, in 2013, by cutting the federal workforce by 5 percent through attrition–hiring two employees for every three leaving–and extending President Barack Obama’s pay freeze for federal employees through mid-2014. They say their plan could save $127 billion over up to a decade to counter the $110 billion in first-year sequestration reductions.
The bill House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) has pushed in the House aims to prevent the first year of sequestration cuts by reducing the federal workforce by 10 percent, by hiring only one bureaucrat for every three who retire.
McKeon lauded the Senate bill yesterday, saying it “echoes the common sense approach of the House bill.”
“No one believes this is a perfect or final solution, but it is a realistic one,” he said. “It keeps our national security structure whole through a very political year, giving our military the certainty they need.”
Lawmakers and congressional insiders have said they don’t expect Congress to change the sequestration cuts slated to start next January, if they alter them at all, until the lame-duck session of Congress following the November elections. While Republicans control the House, which bodes well for McKeon’s bill, Democrats control the Senate, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was critical of the Senate Republicans’ anti-sequestration bill yesterday.
The sequestration cuts come as a result of the failure of a “super committee” of lawmakers to craft a plan last year to cut the federal deficit by $1.2 trillion. Under the Budget Control Act of 2011, if Congress could not agree to such last year the sequestration process would trigger $1.2 trillion in longterm cuts starting in January 2013, with half coming from the Pentagon. The roughly $500 billion in defense cuts would be in addition to a $450 billion reduction to the Pentagon’s 10-year spending plans already approved by the law.
Reid told reporters yesterday that an agreement is in place for the sequestration cuts.
“Here we have more than a handshake, we have a law that is in place in our country,” he said. “They should keep their word,” he added, referring to the Senate GOP group.
Other Democrats including Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) have panned proposals like Kyl and McCain’s that do not raise taxes to close the federal budget deficit.
The GOP senator thus far have no support from Democrats, though the hawkish Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I/D-Conn.) has spoken favorably about their effort (Defense Daily, Jan. 25).
Obama said last year he would “veto any effort to get rid of those automatic spending cuts to domestic and defense spending.” Speaking on Nov. 21, 2011, the day the “super committee” announced defeat, he said he wanted congressional Democrats and Republicans to go back to work and hash out a large-scale deficit-cutting plan.