–Two GOP Senators Seek Detailed Preview of Sequestration
–Sens. Sessions, Thune Say Hill Has ‘Tried Repeatedly’ For Cut Details
–More Than 50 House Republicans Also Push For More Details

By John Shaw

WASHINGTON (MNI) – Congressional Republicans continue to push
legislation that would require the White House budget office to provide
substantial details on how the scheduled across-the-board spending cuts
would affect government programs.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget
Committee, and Sen. John Thune, the chairman of the Senate Republican
Policy Committee, sent a letter Tuesday to Senate Budget Committee
Chairman Kent Conrad requesting that the Budget panel hold a hearing on
their bill in the coming weeks.

The senators said the report they want the White House budget
office to submit to Congress would include an estimate, on a program and
project level, of the spending cuts needed to reach the $110 billion in
spending cuts for the 2013 fiscal year mandated by the sequestration
process.

“This report will assist Congress in its year-end legislative
business and its receipt by Congress next month would be particularly
timely,” the letter from the two Republican senators said.

“Having information about how the sequester would be implemented,
and the specific items of spending that would be reduced, is critical in
evaluating the impact of the sequester,” they write.

Sessions and Thune said they have tried “repeatedly” to get this
information from the White House budget office and it has not been
provided.

“As a result, this legislation is needed for Congress to do its job
with full information,” they add.

The senators said “hard data” is needed for Congress to determine
“how to appropriately deal with the impending sequester.”

More than 50 Republicans in the House have introduced an identical
bill.

The across-the-board spending cuts, also called sequestration, are
part of the convergence of three consequential fiscal policies that are
scheduled to converge near at the end of this year.

The other two aspects of the so-called fiscal cliff are the
expirations of Bush-era tax cuts at the end of 2012 and the need to
increase the statutory debt ceiling at the end of this year or early
next year.

About $1.2 trillion in across-the-board spending cuts over nine
years are mandated by the sequestration process which was triggered by
the failure of Congress’ Super Committee last fall.

For the 2013 fiscal year, $110 billion in spending cuts are
required by the sequestration process. Of this sum, $55 billion would
come from defense programs and the rest from domestic programs,
primarily from the discretionary portion of the federal budget.

Several Senate Republicans are pushing an amendment to the farm
bill that would require the Department of Defense to report to Congress
by August on how these defense spending cuts would affect national
security.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told a Senate Appropriations
subcommittee last week that he is deeply troubled by the sequestration
process.

“It was designed as a meat axe. It was designed to be a disaster.
Because the hope was, because it’s such a disaster, that Congress would
respond and do what was right. And so I’m just here to tell you, yes, it
would be a disaster,” Panetta said.

Republicans have passed in the House a plan to replace the $110
billion in across-the-board spending cuts in FY’13 with a package of
more than $300 billion in ten-year spending savings.

The plan was crafted by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan.
Ryan’s plan reduces spending on food stamps, curtails medical
malpractice claims, repeals part of the Dodd-Frank law, requires federal
employees to contribute more for their pensions, cuts the child tax
credit program, and repeals the Social Services block grant program.

Congressional Democrats have said the across-the-board spending
cuts should be replaced by a “balanced approach to deficit reduction.”

** MNI Washington Bureau: (202) 371-2121 **

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