DOD Sequestration Bill

With the sequestration deadline looming at the end of this week, House Armed Services seapower and projection forces subcommittee Chairman Randy Forbes (R-VA) announced this morning that he has introduced a bill that would remove the Defense Department-related budget cuts from sequestration and reduce the total size of the sequester by that amount. According to a statement his office just issued:

"Sequestration cuts eclipse any other national security threat facing our nation," said Forbes. "Lawmakers in Washington have crossed a red line in our constitutional duty -- outlined in the first sentence of the U.S. Constitution -- to provide for the common defense.  I voted against sequestration and I’ve warned about these cuts for 18 months.  This bill represents an opportunity for lawmakers to blunt sequestration's debilitating impact on national defense."

With just days before the sequester takes place, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey has testified that the U.S. military "can’t give another dollar" in defense cuts.  Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said sequestration "guarantees that we hollow out the military."

Since 2009, the Department of Defense has taken roughly $800 billion in spending reductions.  Sequestration would cut nearly $500 billion more in defense spending. National defense accounts for approximately 20% of federal spending, yet will constitute roughly 50% of the total spending cuts under sequestration.  These cuts would represent the most dramatic cuts facing the Department of Defense in three and a half decades -- far surpassing the cuts of the 1990s which left our nation unprepared for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

"While I believe that the whole of sequestration's arbitrary cuts can and should be avoided, America's lawmakers must take direct and immediate action to ensure that the U.S. military has the capabilities necessary to protect and defend the United States," Forbes said. "The security of our nation and our men and women in uniform must not continue to bear the brunt of the two-plus-year failure of Congress and the President to agree on the appropriate way to reduce the federal debt and deficit."