Rather than toasting to the end of the federal financial wars as Congress heads into the Thanksgiving break, everyone might as well just relax and enjoy some time off from considering the implications of budget cuts as the next critical deadline in the ongoing saga now lies a year away.
Still, it appears the saga will probably heat up again as soon as next week. Now that the the so-called “super committee” has officially failed, Republicans are talking about rewriting the rules for across-the-board cuts to soften the blow for Defense, according to Government Executive. Obama has suggested he could veto such attempts.
We enter dangerous territory when we start discussing potential pay cuts and federal workforce reduction as a means of weathering the economic storm and reducing the $1.2 trillion deficit.” – W. Hord Tipton
House Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon, R-Calif., a vocal opponent to the sequester from the onset, said on Monday that he will introduce legislation in the coming days to prevent the cuts from taking effect in their current form.
“I will not be the Armed Services chairman who presides over crippling our military. I will not let these sequestration cuts stand,” he said in a statement.
The inability for leaders of the Congressional committee to find at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reductions now sets up what is likely to be a yearlong political fight over the automatic cuts to a broad range of military and domestic programs that would go into effect starting in 2013 as a result of their inability to reach a deal, according to the New York Times.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports December 2012 is the next critical deadline in the budget wars, with Obama, safely reelected or acting as a lame-duck president, wielding a veto pen with the power to return tax rates to Clinton-era levels.
Democrats say they see the issue as an easy way to portray Obama’s opponent in the presidential election as a defender of tax cuts for the rich.
The imminent failure of the committee, which had a chance to settle the nation’s tax policy for the next decade, would thrust the much-contested Bush tax cuts into the forefront of next year’s presidential campaign.
There is much to consider.
As Breaking Gov contributor W. Hord Tipton wrote recently:
“In my opinion, we enter dangerous territory when we start discussing potential pay cuts and federal workforce reduction as a means of weathering the economic storm and reducing the $1.2 trillion deficit – specifically as it pertains to federal information security personnel.”
And as the Washington Post’s Joe Davidson points out:
“The ‘supercommittee’ presented the federal workforce with a lose-lose situation. … Instead, automatic cuts worth the same amount are scheduled to be played out on an agency-by-agency basis. Those cuts, half of which would fall on national security, would not take effect until 2013. But even before then, look for more buyouts and layoffs that vary by agency and an impaired ability for federal workers to serve the American people.
He continued: “Had members of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction agreed on ways to slash the deficit by at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years, any deal could have resulted in across-the-board cuts to federal employees – things such as a hit to retirement benefits or an extended pay freeze.”
Like I said, take a break. Enjoy some turkey. This conversation will be going on for quite a while yet.