With Congress getting ready to recess, many saw Thursday’s House Armed Services Committee hearing as their last chance: Republicans hoped to learn details on how sequestration will affect defense programs, while the Pentagon tried to convince lawmakers to stop asking for a plan to mitigate next year’s $55 billion in cuts and start focusing on a compromise to stave off the sequester’s cuts altogether. But no one seemed to achieve their goals.
Pentagon Comptroller Robert Hale continued to stress that the Defense Department was not planning for the looming cuts, as House Republicans and Democrats sniped about which side has done more to avoid sequestration. The stalemate ups the pressure to reach a deficit-deal compromise during the lame-duck session—as neither lawmakers nor the Pentagon appeared to budge from their previous positions.
Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., asked if Hale would recommend a way to implement the sequester that would cause the least harm to the military if Congress “continues to be irresponsible.”
“We need to avoid this thing, not try to make it better,” Hale shot back. “If you’re driving into a brick wall at 60 miles an hour, let’s find a way to avoid the wall, not figure out a way to pick up the pieces after we hit it.” No one wants the $500 billion in defense cuts over the next decade, he said. “We’re not going to be able to make it fundamentally better.”
Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., insisted that the House passed five measures that would alleviate the defense cuts, while the White House failed to lead. Armed Services ranking member Adam Smith, D-Wash., retorted that President Obama “made two proposals that Congress rejected.”
Cue the fireworks. “The president got zero votes out of 535 potential on his budget. It’s time for him to lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way of this country,” Scott said.
Some, like Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, did not play the blame game. “We shouldn’t be asking the generals that are here and the secretary ... to give us a solution,” Reyes said. “Even though I didn’t vote for this idiotic, stupid law, I accept responsibility as part of the Congress, and I think it’s up to us to find the solution. However we do that, we better do it fast.”
Hale, along with the vice chiefs of the four military branches, stressed the dangers sequestration poses. Troops’ pay and benefits are to be exempt, but cuts could mean delayed weapons projects, reduced training, and a civilian hiring freeze.
Last week, Republicans were incensed by a White House report they hoped would detail how specific programs would be affected. The report simply outlined a 9.4 percent reduction to most defense accounts as a preliminary estimate. “We’ll wait as long as we can to begin this [planning] process, again in hopes that it is halted,” Hale said. “But we won’t wait so long that we won’t have this department ready if in fact it goes into effect on Jan. 2.”
Committee Chairman Buck McKeon, R-Calif., conceded that planning isn’t a solution. “But the lack of planning and the failure to exercise leadership now can make a dire situation worse.”
This article appeared in the Friday, September 21, 2012 edition of National Journal Daily.
