For automatic budget cuts the reckoning is approaching
Some Lawmakers Look for Way Out as Defense Cuts Near
By JONATHAN WEISMAN, NYT
SUMTER, S.C. — Senator Lindsey Graham rode last week like Paul Revere from South Carolina’s wooded upstate to its gracious Low country to its sweltering midsection, offering a bureaucratic rallying cry for his military-heavy state — the defense cuts are coming.
On Jan. 2, national security is set to receive a heavy blow if Congress fails to intervene. That is when a 10-year, $600 billion, across-the-board spending cut is to hit the Pentagon, equal to roughly 8 percent of its current budget.
Mr. Graham’s colleagues in the Senate have been strangely quiet about the impending cuts, set in motion last summer when the Budget Control Act ended an impasse over raising the nation’s borrowing limit with a deal designed to hurt both parties if they did not strike an agreement later on. A special select committee was assigned to come up with at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years. If it failed, the cuts would come automatically, half to national security, half to domestic programs.
It failed, and the reckoning is approaching.
(More here.)
By JONATHAN WEISMAN, NYT
SUMTER, S.C. — Senator Lindsey Graham rode last week like Paul Revere from South Carolina’s wooded upstate to its gracious Low country to its sweltering midsection, offering a bureaucratic rallying cry for his military-heavy state — the defense cuts are coming.
On Jan. 2, national security is set to receive a heavy blow if Congress fails to intervene. That is when a 10-year, $600 billion, across-the-board spending cut is to hit the Pentagon, equal to roughly 8 percent of its current budget.
Mr. Graham’s colleagues in the Senate have been strangely quiet about the impending cuts, set in motion last summer when the Budget Control Act ended an impasse over raising the nation’s borrowing limit with a deal designed to hurt both parties if they did not strike an agreement later on. A special select committee was assigned to come up with at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years. If it failed, the cuts would come automatically, half to national security, half to domestic programs.
It failed, and the reckoning is approaching.
(More here.)
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