Posts Tagged ‘Congress/DOD’

The 394-page report released Friday by the White House intended to provide a detailed picture of the impact of $109 billion in government-wide spending reductions provided very little new information beyond reinforcing previous warnings that the cuts would be “deeply destructive to national security, domestic investments and core government functions.” The impact on defense programs essentially can be boiled down to the report’s estimate that funding for each defense account would be reduced by 9.4 percent if sequestration is imposed on Jan. 2, according to OMB …

The House on Thursday passed legislation that would nullify $55 billion in defense cuts set to be imposed on Jan. 2, but the move likely does not bring Congress any closer to reversing the fiscal 2013 installment of automatic spending reductions as the bill is not expected to be taken up by the Senate. The measure would require President Obama to issue a plan by Oct. 15 to replace the defense cuts with other spending reductions, reported CQ Today. The plan could not, however, include revenue increases …

The base defense budget would receive a $3.1 billion funding increase under the fiscal 2013 stopgap spending measure the House approved Thursday to keep the government running for the first six months of the new fiscal year. Of course, compared to the department’s $516.8 billion base budget in FY 2012, the increase is minuscule. And the gain could be short-lived given the looming threat of $55 billion in automatic cuts this January. Not to mention that the continuing resolution provides funding only through March 27, 2013, and does not represent a full year’s worth of funding …

The White House on Wednesday threatened to veto a measure House lawmakers are expected to consider as soon as today that would require the president to replace the $55 billion in defense cuts set to go into effect in January. The legislation violates last year’s Budget Control Act by failing to call for a balanced approach to reducing the deficit, according to the statement issued by the Office of Management and Budget …

A bipartisan group of eight senators is continuing to make progress on an ambitious plan to slash deficit spending by at least $4 trillion. The plan, which would not be considered by lawmakers until after the November election, may include a fix to stop next year’s automatic spending cuts from going into effect. Recently, the group upped its target for savings to $5 trillion to reflect the spending cuts called for by the Simpson-Bowles Commission as well as the discretionary spending caps in last year’s Budget Control Act …

In a discussion intended to bring out the differences between the two candidates for president regarding defense policy, speakers emphasized the common challenges confronting either President Obama or Mitt Romney. No matter which candidate is elected, the next president faces essentially the same political environment and economic realities, Marvin Kalb, an award-winning correspondent for CBS and NBC news, told the audience gathered Monday at the Brookings Institution …

The path to a streamlined process for disposing of thousands of unneeded federal properties while raising billions in government revenue is filled with a variety of roadblocks, including competing legislative proposals, opposition over an exemption to a rule intended to benefit homeless groups and overly optimistic valuations of surplus buildings. Later this month, the Senate is expected to debate a proposal introduced by Thomas Carper (D-Del.) that would establish a five-year pilot program for agencies to eliminate excess properties, reports CQ Today …

Sen. John McCain is discussing with senators from both parties the possibility of delaying for three months the $55 billion in automatic defense cuts slated to go into effect on Jan. 2. The senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee is considering whether the measure should be offered as a stand-alone bill or as an amendment to the fiscal 2013 continuing resolution. McCain told the publication his proposal to delay sequestration of the Pentagon’s budget “is the most important option” to keep the reductions from being imposed …

Automatic reductions in the Pentagon’s budget scheduled to be implemented in January will have far-reaching effects on the defense industry, its employees and the defense industrial base, leading contractors said in response to questions from seven senators on the Armed Services Committee. “[Sequestration] will cause dramatic program and personnel dislocation within our industry, with our government customers, and will disrupt the lives of a significant portion of our 120,000 employees and their families …

The Air Force would be barred from implementing its plan to trim the force structure of the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve, under the six-month continuing resolution unveiled Monday by House appropriators that would fund the federal government starting in October. The provision in the stopgap legislation blocking the Air Force from retiring or transferring aircraft assigned to active duty, the Air National Guard or Air Force Reserve follows language in both the fiscal 2013 defense spending and authorization bills drafted by the House and Senate …