McKeon seeks budget-cut exemption for DoD - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

McKeon seeks budget-cut exemption for DoD

The powerful chairman of the House Armed Services Committee has an ambitious goal of trying to get Congress to pass legislation by summer to exempt the Defense Department from across-the-board budget cuts that could hit the federal government next year.

To pull that off, Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., said he’ll have to demonstrate that the uncertainty of not knowing future defense spending levels is just as dangerous as the cuts.

In a Jan. 18 interview, McKeon said he hopes hearings beginning in February on the Obama administration’s 2013 budget will help make the case that communities and defense-related industries are hurt by their inability to plan beyond January 2013, when across-the-board cuts totaling $1.2 trillion are set to take effect then unless an agreement is reached to alter the rules set in last year’s Budget Control Act.

The Defense Department would have to accommodate about half of the $1.2 trillion in cuts, and that would come on top of a reduction of $485 billion already approved for the nation’s long-range defense plans.

DoD’s share of sequestration — the technical name for the budget cuts — would total about $55 billion in 2013.

McKeon said House Republican leaders have tried to assure him that the automatic cuts won’t happen next year, and DoD shares the same view, but he fears continued legislative deadlock leaves open the possibility of the cuts will kick in next year and also creates a wave of uncertainty among troops and in the defense industry.

McKeon’s optimistic goal is to get legislation exempting the military from sequestration enacted into law by summer. In his view, if congressional leaders and the Obama administration don’t believe sequestration will happen in 2013, there should be no reason why they would oppose legislation that guarantees no cuts next year.

He is not happy with the $485 billion reduction over 10 years already being made in the defense budget plan but sees little chance of stopping that.

“I think this is pretty much a foregone conclusion,” he said of the reduction ordered as the first stage of cuts in the Budget Control Act of 2011. “I think we are going to get that handed to us.”

There is a chance, he said, Congress might reverse course in a year or two when the full implications are realized.

“A lot of people do not understand the full impact of what those cuts will mean,” McKeon said.

“They won’t see the full impact until people start to lose their jobs and start calling their congressman’s office that is when we start getting the impact. When we have another [base closure and realignment commission], that is when we’ll start seeing the impact,” he said.

Base closings and reductions would hit hard in military-heavy states with large concentrations of Army and Marine Corps forces.

“It’s going to be uneven,” he said, naming Virginia, Texas and California as states that would be expected to feel the most pain.