Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) joined a growing number of lawmakers yesterday who have pledged to fight automatic Pentagon budget cuts slated to be made if a deficit panel and Congress don’t agree on a plan to reduce overall spending.
Some observers are pessimistic that the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction will agree to a plan by its Nov. 23 deadline to trim government spending over the next decade by at least $1.2 trillion. If it can’t craft a deal that passes Congress by Dec. 23, according to the Budget Control Act of 2011, a sequestration process will automatically cut $1.2 trillion in spending starting in 2013, with roughly half coming from the Pentagon. Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Ranking Member John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have worked on a plan to prevent such sizable defense cuts under sequestration.
Cornyn, a member of SASC as well as the Senate Finance and Budget committees, said yesterday at the Hudson Institute that if the deficit committee “fails to meet its targets and the sequestration kicks in, I’m going to be all in trying to fix the cuts to Defense Department.”
Cornyn said he agrees with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno that such sequestration cuts, on top of a $450 billion reduction to the Pentagon’s spending plans already approved by the Budget Control Act of 2011, would make this country “more vulnerable to our adversaries.”
He told the Washington think tank he does not want to see the sequestration process triggered, saying that could further harm this country’s economic standing,
“But if heaven forbid (sequestration) were to happen, I for one would be doing everything I can to undo it, to make sure that the Defense Department did not have to deal with these sort of draconian cuts,” Cornyn said.
Lawmakers have been anxiously waiting to hear if the deficit committee, made up of six Democrats and six Republicans, can agree on a plan over the next two weeks. Graham reportedly has worked on legislation that would replace sequestration cuts to defense with reductions to other parts of the federal budget.
McCain said during a Fox News interview Tuesday that “we have to make plans to try to reduce or even eliminate those cuts” to defense.
“Lindsey Graham and I and some others are working on a plan where maybe we could enact further savings and efficiencies, but certainly not the kind that are envisioned by the sequestration action if that eventuality should arise,” he said. “We just simply can’t afford it. We live in too dangerous a world.”
McCain said at a Capitol Hill press conference on Monday that he, Graham, “and others” were “finding ways to impose (defense) efficiencies that we believe that the Pentagon, the president and Congress could agree on.”
McCain has questioned the weight of the Budget Control Act of 2011 and the sequestration trigger created by it.
“Congress cannot bind the actions of future Congresses,” he said. “So the sequestration is not engraved on golden tablets. It is a notional aspiration….And I think we’d have sufficient support to prevent those kinds of cuts being enacted because of the impact it would have on national security.”
SASC Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.), standing beside McCain at the Monday press conference, reiterated his view that sequestration would be “terrible.” Yet he said he did not want to comment in detail about trying to avoid the sequestration cuts to the Pentagon because he wants “sequestration and the threat of it to have an effect.”
“I don’t want to take the pressure off (the deficit committee) to reach a deal by talking about avoiding or eliminating the effects of sequestration if there’s no deal,” Levin told reporters.
Deficit committee member Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) reportedly told journalists on Monday he thinks there would be “bipartisan interest” in a plan to reduce the size of the Pentagon sequestration cuts.
In the Republican-controlled House, multiple members of the House Armed Services Committee have pledged to fight the defense sequestration reduction.
However, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has said he would stick by the sequestration plan created by the Budget Control Act of 2011.