Five senators, John McCain (R-AZ), Jon Kyl (R-AZ.), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Joe Lieberman, (I-CT) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), have announced their intention to renege on the deficit deal agreed to by Congress and the White House in August, and attempt to circumvent the automatic defense cuts that were agreed to be part of the consequences should the Super Congress fail. Which it did, but these petulant legislators
refuse to accept consequences. Gee, that doesn't sound like Joe Lieberman at all, does it.
Formal legislation will likely hit the Hill sometime in January, when Congress returns from the Christmas break, Ayotte said today. The freshman senator was light on details but she was clear the legislation would shift the $500 billion in spending cuts from the Pentagon's budget and move them into other agencies budgets. Tough times demand tough decisions, Graham told reporters at the same event, but the times demand that "the first check you write should be for defense." [...]
"The devil [will be] in the details" Todd Harrison, a defense budget expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, added. Finding spending cuts outside the Pentagon will force the group to either increase tax revenues, cut entitlement programs like Medicare or Social Security or adopt a slate of politically unpalatable options, Harrison said. And after all that, there is no guarantee that the Pentagon will be spared the budget ax, he added. Summing up the monumental task facing Ayotte's group, Harrison said if there was a deficit reduction plan that could spare defense spending "the Super Committee would have come up with it."
President Obama has also said he will veto any attempt to circumvent the deal. Nonetheless, these senators and their colleague in the House, Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, won't let that stop them. McKeon has been on a impending disaster kick, rivaled only by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. McKeon's latest schtick is focusing on these cuts as job killers.
Representative Buck McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said his panel estimated the initial $489 billion in defense cuts approved by Congress would cost 100,000 military jobs, mostly Army and Marines, as well as 200,000 civilian defense jobs and 500,000 defense industry positions.
"We're looking at ... between 700,000 and 800,000 jobs," McKeon told the House of Representatives Rules Committee during testimony about the compromise National Defense Authorization Act approved on Monday by House and Senate negotiators.
However, the research shows that cuts in domestic spending—what the hawks want as a substitute for the triggered cuts—would be much more disastrous for jobs.