U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, John McCain and Joe Lieberman, deal breakers. (Mohammad Ismail/Reuters)
It's well established that, particularly in budget matters, it's difficult for one Congress to impose its will on future Congresses. But, it turns out,
this Congress can't even
impose its will on itself.
[D]espite a veto threat from President Barack Obama, congressional Republicans and a handful of Democrats have vowed to somehow unravel the spending cuts this year — which are scheduled to hit defense and domestic programs equally in January 2013.
“I’m very concerned about the defense cuts in sequestration, but it’s also the cuts to nondefense discretionary [that] are also devastating,” Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) told POLITICO. “Ultimately, I think there’s a very strong feeling that it’s not going to go into effect.” [...]
California Republican Buck McKeon, the powerful chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a Boehner ally, has introduced a bill that would trim the federal workforce and use those savings to offset one year of automatic cuts to both defense and domestic programs. [...]
On the Senate side, Republicans John McCain and Jon Kyl of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Marco Rubio of Florida are putting together a bill that would package various spending cuts identified by the supercommittee and deficit negotiations led by Vice President Joe Biden with some smaller nontax revenue-raisers to prevent the defense cuts. That measure is expected to be released sometime this month.
Just to make this absolutely clear—which the article doesn't do—these are the cuts that Congress agreed to last summer in the debt ceiling deal. They voted to create the Super Congress to find massive budget cuts, and also voted on automatic cuts that would occur if the Super Congress failed. Which it did, of course. I mean, even this Congress was smart enough to look ahead and see that happen.
Of course, this Congress was also cynical enough to pass that law knowing that they'd figure out some way to renege on it.