And as if to soothe your fears, The new Continuing Resolution will include a provision that restores $7 billion in funding for specific Pentagon accounts:
House Republicans are proposing this week to restore upward of $7 billion to operations and maintenance accounts for the four military services hit hard by the automatic cuts that went into effect Friday night.
That’s the bottom line driving a hybrid spending bill to be unveiled Monday and intended to replace the stopgap continuing resolution or CR due to expire March 27.
The measure will keep in place the overall spending reduction known as the sequester ordered Friday. But in the case of the Defense Department, it substitutes an updated full-year budget that shifts money to address the GOP’s great Achilles’ heel: the serious danger to military readiness if the standoff with President Barack Obama drags on for months.
Republicans know they can’t sustain a long fight without addressing this vulnerability, but the CR is also a political tinderbox that could blow up despite all sides now insisting that they want to avoid a government shutdown.
SEE HERE:
Now, the cuts for this fiscal year will be a mere $15 Billion. $15 billion is a mere 2.2% of $676 Billion.
Don’t tell me out of a nearly $676 Budget, they can’t find 2.2% in cuts....
I'll believe it when I see it.
First of all, the proposal only attempts to stop the bleeding caused by the CR by adding in O&M funds, which combined with the $487 Billion in cuts starting in 2011 on top of the Sequester dictating a 13% cut, has sent the Pentagon reeling.
The article acknowledges this fact. I have been shouting this from the rooftops at FR for weeks now, and I have been shouted down. The very thread this is posted on (your thread!) attempts to minimize the horrible effects of Sequestration, and yet you send me this article which affirms everything I have been saying.
Next, the Democrats are not going to allow the Congress to restore funds only to the DoD - they will wand AIDS reserach and everything under the sun funded as well. Watch.
The O&M restoration will stop some bleeding, but the Pentagon still will "owe" $46 Billion from Sequestration no matter how this is sliced. That means readiness is still gutted, hundreds of thousands of furloughs, installations closed, TRICARE for military and families still underfunded, DoD school teachers furloughed (saw that approved just today), and on, and on, and on.
The late "mea culpa" by the Republicans is nothing but an acknowlegement that they sacrificed Defense on the altar with the Faustian bargain of the 2011 Budget Control Agreement.
Isn't it great when the husband who beat his wife last Sunday apologizes on Monday morning when he sobers up? Well, a half apology in this case.
Sequestration has to stop for the DoD. It is a Constitutional enterprise.
The military can, and will cut. It already has. But when North Korea or some other hotspot explodes, our political masters will thrown our volunteer men and women in uniform into the trench in a heartbeat.
Crazy Joe Biden threatened Iran with military force.....this morning! Great Joe. Just great.
You and what Army?
Notice the operative words: "Continues Sequester."
The proposal is only a hopeful bandaid for the gaping wound the GOP allowed to be inflicted on the military.
Not to mention that they Democrats will never allow only DoD to recieve more funds without strings attached to their pet programs.
In other words - more of the same gridlock.