Can DoD Bust Sequester Caps? Rep. Smith Skeptical, Rep. Forbes Hopeful

[unhappycamper]

http://breakingdefense.com/2014/02/can-dod-bust-sequester-caps-rep-smith-skeptical-rep-forbes-hopeful/



Can DoD Bust Sequester Caps? Rep. Smith Skeptical, Rep. Forbes Hopeful
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
on February 26, 2014 at 3:38 PM

WASHINGTON: The administration has spent the last 48 hours insisting they would not in good conscience submit a Pentagon budget that kept under current spending caps, that national security simply needs more money. This afternoon, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Adam Smith, said more money almost certainly isn’t coming. (Note: he is, of course, not an appropriator.) But Republican Randy Forbes, a top contender to replace HASC’s outgoing chairman, was most positive on the administration’s chances.

Speaking this afternoon at Bloomberg Government’s defense summit, Smith and Forbes agreed on their opposition to the 10-year, half-trillion defense cut known as sequestration, and indeed on many other matters. “We are the most bipartisan committee in Congress,” Smith said, “[though] that’s a very low bar to jump over these days.” And both men declined to give odds on whether sequestration was here to stay. But Smith, the Democrat, was clearly more pessimistic.

“There isn’t much of an appetite for raising the topline,” Rep. Smith said. “Personally, I’d turn off sequestration tomorrow,” he said, but if you try to increase defense spending above the levels set by the sequester and December’s budget deal, there’d be a “domino effect” as Democrats would insist on raising domestic discretionary spending to match. “That brings you back to the ‘grand bargain’” that has eluded legislators since 2011, “where you cut entitlements and raise taxes,” Smith said. “It’s a unicorn, basically, and we need to stop talking about it.”

Forbes, however, kept hope alive: We can restore Pentagon spending without reopening the entire can of worms, he said, because to “provide for the common defense” has to be a higher priority than other kinds of federal spending.