House GOP prepares stopgap spending bill to avoid shutdown

The Hill ^ | 13 Feb 13 | Erik Wasson

[SkyPilot]

House appropriators are finalizing a stopgap spending bill to prevent a government shutdown after March 27, and the bill could see a vote before the end of February.

House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said Thursday that he is crafting a continuing resolution at the current level of spending, thereby separating the issue of a government shutdown from the question of how to deal with automatic sequestration cuts.

The stopgap spending bill would be set at the current level of $1.043 trillion for the entire fiscal year that began Oct. 1. It would specify that the $85 billion sequestration is allowed to take place unless it is separately turned off.

The bill would contain full-year appropriations bills for the Defense department, and also cover military construction and veterans' affairs spending.

By going from a stopgap bill for these areas to a detailed appropriations bill, Rogers hopes to help the Pentagon cope better with the effects of sequestration. The CR alone was slated to cause an $11 billion shortfall for the Pentagon's operations and maintenance account and the Rogers plan would allow the Pentagon to work around that limitation.

Impacts were projected to affect matters from Joint Strike Fighter procurement to the building of medical facilities to treat wounded soldiers.

[SkyPilot]

This new, quite frankly, convinces me even more that the GOP will allow the Sequester to happen and harm national defense.

Our government seems to be able to clear every hurdle, EXCEPT the Sequester cuts that force the Dod (at about 18% of the budget) to pay for 50% of the massive cuts.

The Congress agreed to tax increases, but would not solve the Sequester. The Congress agreed to a debt limit extension, but would not address the Sequester. The Congress agreed to debate amnesty, but would not re-address the looming Sequester.

The House is now admitting to what the Joint Chiefs told them yesterday and today - that the CR (on top of the $487 in cuts started in 2011 and the Sequester that has now risen to a 13% cut) was killing the military.

This is a "bone" - but does not remove the threat to the military. All of the Sequester money has to come from Operations and Maintenance, because Obama said they could not address military pay and service contracts are off the table. So the military O&M budget is going to be raped.

I wish they would simply get beyond this. Our military deserves better.

The fact is, the US military is being held hostage by both parties because of......Medicare. The Republicans admitted as much this week, saying it was the biggest deficit driver, and Jay Carney said Obama would not put raising the Medicare age from 65 to 67 (as he did back in 2011) back on the table.

So, the gutting of Defense will remain on the calendar.

[Cheerio]

Out of two or three issues where the GOP House has the upper hand, they just hand it to Obama and say "Oh plueeze don't call us bad people - we do not want to be blamed for a shutdown".

Gimme a break - I know why I am registered Ind.

[Sacajaweau]

They waited to see if Obama was going to do anything to stop it....since he caused it. Nope...

Ball is in our court.

[Tzimisce]

New promises same crap.....

[LearsFool]

Sheesh, whose side are they on anyway?! Oh wait, nevermind.

As someone once said, “We don’t need a third party. But a second one would sure be nice.”

[SecondAmendment]

> The fact is, the US military is being held hostage by both parties because of......Medicare

This one is simple, are more voters in the military or on medicare?

[Pollster1]

Considering the options, I might favor continued spending for the next four years at 2012 levels. It’s harder to call it is “cut” if there is no agreement, particularly if it is exactly level with last year. That might be our best bet for a step toward responsible spending. Granted, it’ll take a couple decades to balance the budget if they won’t cut, but at least we’ll be moving in that direction. Considering the republicans we have, that may be the best option we can get.

[DugwayDuke]

“All of the sequester money has to come from Operations and Maintenance”. Not correct. Only military pay and wounded warrior programs are shielded. All other programs and activities are taking the same cut. The biggest problems are in the operations and maintenance accounts but that is because the other programs may have more flexibility in how they deal with the cuts.

Much of the size of the impact is due to political decisions made by this administration not to allow the services to plan for sequestration.

[SkyPilot]

You are actually correct in part of your statement, but here is the real impact.

Military pay is exempt as you said. For now. Obama ordered that in July because he didn't want to deal with the political fallout in an election year with criticism that he "cut the troops pay." Now, he is going to cut troops - big time. He could care less about them.

The Army alone is going to gut their personnel strength:

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno said sequestration would force large end strength cuts, the extent of which are not yet known. For fiscal year 2014 and beyond, it will result in “the loss of at least an additional 100,000 personnel, soldiers, from the active Army, the Army National guard and the U.S. Army reserve,” he said. “Combined with previous cuts, this will result in a total reduction of at least 189,000 personnel from the force -- but probably even more than that.”

So, 26% of the DoD budget is off limits. The 19% that procurement takes looks like a player, but it isn't. We are halfway through the fiscal year. Many of those contracts are already signed. We get into legal territory now. Some of them could possibly be broken through a pause in orders, modifications, or partial terminations. But in the end, the lawyers always win. The DoD may end up owing more, so they are holding off with doing that....for now.

That leaves a very, very small piece of the pie to "pay" for this massive, massive cut (again, halfway through the fiscal year).

They can furlough civilians (funded by O&M funds), but that only buys the DoD $5 Billion between March and September, they need another $41 Billion, just until the end of the fiscal year!

In October, this all starts all over again.....for another 9 years!

And that is why the hollowing out of the force is going to be so drastic, so rapid, and so deep.

What really has to happen is Entitlement reform. Entitlements are out of control.

[SkyPilot]

Much of the size of the impact is due to political decisions made by this administration not to allow the services to plan for sequestration.

See this thread:

use GOP blames DOD on sequester

The "fail to plan" blame game is a disingenuous political game that is boob bait for the bubba public. The House Armed Services Committee and Senate Armed Services Committee member of both parties privately told the DoD the sequestration cuts would not happen.

That is, until, the January Fiscal Cliff "deal" dealt with the tax issue half of the Fiscal Cliff, and only delayed sequester for 60 days. Congress refused to deal with it because it was too hard.

Obama actually gave in on the Social Security COLA reform in his negotiation with Boehner, but he wanted a raise in the tax rates for individuals making $500K a year - and Boehner would not go for it so he abandoned the talks and began his ill fated "Plan B" exercise that collapsed with a failure in support from even his own party.

Ashton Carter was correct today when he said that if the DoD had "planned" for this train wreck, Congress would have thought the DoD could live with it - and it cannot! They TOLD Congress this, and have been telling them that, for 16 solid months.

So no, I am not buying the "failure to plan" suitcase full of goods. I am not "planning" on catching Ebola tomorrow either. If I do, someone can't "blame" me for failing to plan for it. It is a disaster either way.

[SkyPilot]

Much of the size of the impact is due to political decisions made by this administration not to allow the services to plan for sequestration.

See this thread:

use GOP blames DOD on sequester

The "fail to plan" blame game is a disingenuous political game that is boob bait for the bubba public. The House Armed Services Committee and Senate Armed Services Committee member of both parties privately told the DoD the sequestration cuts would not happen.

That is, until, the January Fiscal Cliff "deal" dealt with the tax issue half of the Fiscal Cliff, and only delayed sequester for 60 days. Congress refused to deal with it because it was too hard.

Obama actually gave in on the Social Security COLA reform in his negotiation with Boehner, but he wanted a raise in the tax rates for individuals making $500K a year - and Boehner would not go for it so he abandoned the talks and began his ill fated "Plan B" exercise that collapsed with a failure in support from even his own party.

Ashton Carter was correct today when he said that if the DoD had "planned" for this train wreck, Congress would have thought the DoD could live with it - and it cannot! They TOLD Congress this, and have been telling them that, for 16 solid months.

So no, I am not buying the "failure to plan" suitcase full of goods. I am not "planning" on catching Ebola tomorrow either. If I do, someone can't "blame" me for failing to plan for it. It is a disaster either way.

[i_robot73]

‘Massive’ cuts, pretty funny.

Maybe the GOP should have looked a bit further down the road than pass the 60B in Sandy ‘relief’ (90% that had NOTHING to do with Sandy). Possibly, shut down all those duplicate programs/etc. that cost $B; that report came out and was quickly shelved. No? How about 0-balance those Unconstitutional departments, I’ve got a long list if they need a few examples, and use the funds to do one of the FEW things they are obligated.

Hell, they should just pass amnesty. Then they’ll have a whole new pool of taxpayers to suck dry.

Let ‘em own it. They kicked the can down the road and raised the dept limit while, as usual, waiting for the ‘catastrophe’ to ‘run up’ on them. The party should die a horrible slow death...I can only dream it’s soon, so we can get REAL/good people to FINALLY represent We the People.

[Hoodat]

The stopgap spending bill would be set at the current level of $1.043 trillion for the entire fiscal year that began Oct. 1.

Idiots. If you are going to pass a stopgap spending bill, then REDUCE THE AMOUNT OF SPENDING INSIDE THE BILL!

[itsahoot]

So, the gutting of Defense will remain on the calendar.

It was always on the calendar, and no deal will take it off. Obama gets everything he wants and the GOPe gets the blame.

[sauropod]

Accurate assessment.

[CharlesWayneCT]

Maybe you think differently, but I’d rather have the cuts than have a tax increase on “the rich”.

[CharlesWayneCT]

It’s funny that here you note correctly that the real problem is that they didn’t plan ahead, so too much of the budget is now off-limits. But in another thread you posted, you attacked a congressman who said exactly the same thing — that the problem is that the DoD didn’t plan for sequestration, because they believed Obama.

The GOP was clear — there would be no sequestration, IF Romney won the presidency. He didn’t. And we aren’t going to increase taxes.

[SkyPilot]

They didn't "plan" for it because it was never supposed to happen, and both parties said that.

The only way they could have "planned" for this rapid a draw down would have been to take actions like stop awarding contracts, fired the term employees last year (which the DoD would have been destroyed by Congress for doing), and started to cut back on training and operations last year.

Ashton Carter was correct - "planning" for it would have enabled taking actions detrimental to national security before the election, some reversible, some not so reversible.

We raised taxes, but didn't apply ANY of that revenue to the sequester. The White House and Congress discussed all options (including entitlement reform), but it all fell apart.

So the DoD got nothing out of that whole mess except a delay. It wasn't the DoD that came up with this jacked up concept, or the formula that punished defense inordinately. It isn't the DoD who that is bankrupting the nation. Defense spending as a percentage of GDP is at historic lows. You can thank entitlements for that, yet, DC is trying to balance 3/3rds of the budget by cutting the 1/3 that is discretionary spending, with again - defense paying the biggest price.

Defense is Constitutional. Food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, TANF, and unemployment checks are not.

No segment of society has sacrificed more for this nation in the last decade since 911, and Defense is being pushed to the front of the fiscal firing squad by Washington.

[SkyPilot]

but I’d rather have the cuts than have a tax increase on “the rich”.

Ha. Completely understand that.

I don't want to see any more taxes. Even the payroll tax increase on Social Security is already slowing down the economy. The decrease in defense spending by 22.1% last quarter help put the nation's economic growth into the 0.1% negative territory.

What the nation must do is reform entitlements.

The problem is, there are millions upon millions of citizens who get them (both earned like Social Security and unearned like Food Stams). Everyone who gets entitlements wants them to continue, and does not want them cut.

So....here we are. In a very bad place.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks SkyPilot.

to prevent a government shutdown after March 27