Posts Tagged ‘deficit reduction’

The House on Thursday quickly approved a fiscal 2013 continuing resolution to keep the government open through Sept. 30, sending the bill to President Obama for his signature. The stopgap spending measure — which includes individual spending bills for defense, military construction-veterans affairs, homeland security, agriculture and commerce-justice-science — locks in $85 billion in sequester cuts for FY 2013. It provides $984 billion in discretionary spending for fiscal 2013, after accounting for the across-the-board spending reductions …

The Defense Department will delay sending out furlough notices to almost 800,000 civilian employees to allow officials to determine whether the fiscal 2013 continuing resolution Congress cleared Thursday can reduce some of the unpaid days off workers would be forced to take. DOD civilians had been told that they would be furloughed for up to 22 days between April and the end of the fiscal year to offset the impact of $46 billion in defense cuts triggered by sequestration …

In separate remarks this week about how the military is coping with deep spending cuts, senior defense leaders said closing unneeded bases is one necessary component to putting DOD’s budget on a sustainable path. During remarks Wednesday, Frank Kendall, undersecretary of defense for acquisitions, technology and logistics, said the department’s inventory of installations is a fixed cost that it no longer can afford. “We didn’t get rid of nearly all of our excess capacity in the first three rounds of [BRAC], so there’s more to be done there and money to be saved …

The Government Accountability Office is expected to review how the federal government prepared for and carried out sequestration, following a request earlier this month by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). Ryan asked the congressional watchdog agency to monitor agencies’ compliance with the across-the-board spending cuts and “to review how agencies determined what constituted a ‘program, project, or activity’ for purposes of the sequester …

A final vote in the Senate on a fiscal 2013 continuing resolution is scheduled to take place Thursday and likely would be followed by a vote by the House, allowing Congress to avert the possibility of a government shutdown before the start of its recess. Once the Senate passes the stopgap spending measure needed to keep the government running for the last six months of the fiscal year, the House is poised to approve it as well …

The Senate voted on Monday to limit debate on a fiscal 2013 continuing resolution needed to avert a government shutdown after March 27, setting up a final vote on the measure as early as Tuesday. The motion to cut off debate came as the chamber was unable to reach an agreement to trim the number of proposed amendments to be debated on the floor. Lawmakers had introduced almost 100 …

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Monday directed senior leaders to reconsider the strategic guidance that the Pentagon developed last year to determine if it needs to be adjusted following the arrival of sequestration. President Obama unveiled the strategy in January 2012 that had been crafted to accommodate $487 billion in spending reductions over the following decade. But now that DOD faces the prospect of absorbing an additional $500 billion in cuts through fiscal 2021 …

It came as no surprise during Thursday’s hearing of the House Armed Services’ Readiness Subcommittee that Republicans and Democrats both were adamantly opposed to a looming request from the Pentagon to hold one or more new BRAC rounds. Possibly the only reason to think the mood in Congress had changed since lawmakers last year rejected the administration’s request for two rounds is the arrival of sequestration. The administration’s primary argument to revisit the issue is that a scaling back of force structure …

If Congress is going to authorize one or more base closure rounds in this year’s defense authorization bill, a hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday made clear that it won’t come as a result of support from the House subcommittee responsible for launching a new BRAC. Reiterating many of the same arguments used last year to rebuff the administration’s request for two new rounds, both Republican and Democratic members of the House Armed Services’ Readiness Subcommittee openly criticized the Pentagon’s arguments to hold a BRAC round …

While the Pentagon remains committed to supporting military personnel and their families, across-the-board spending reductions and the ongoing continuing resolution funding DOD in fiscal 2013 will diminish the department’s ability to maintain the level of service it provides and to advance new initiatives, senior DOD officials told the House Armed Services’ Military Personnel Subcommittee Wednesday. “Sequestration and CR will inevitably degrade services and impede progress in most of these programs …