This seems like
a pretty good idea:
“I think we should do something about sequestration. It’s important we do,” [Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid] told reporters at his weekly Capitol briefing. “We should do what was in one of the Ryan budgets, and that is use the overseas contingency fund to delay the implementation of sequestration. We could do it for five months. During this five month period, we could come up with something longer-term.”
The Overseas Contingency Operation (OCO) fund still contains approximately half a trillion unspent dollars, thanks to troop drawdowns from Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years.
And it turns out Republicans are already on record as saying war savings should be counted as deficit reduction, using the war savings in lieu of sequester cuts would still be deficit reduction—at least by their own logic:
House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) has called for using those funds in his prior budget proposals to help reach his deficit reduction targets.
Of course, staying true to their own positions isn't exactly a hallmark of today's GOP. Maybe we'll get lucky and this time they will be reasonable. But in the more likely scenario that they decide not to be reasonable and reject this proposal, it serves as yet another reminder that Republicans are the party of the sequester—and that the only way to move past austerity will be defeating them in 2014.