Throwback Thursday -- Budget Battles

Welcome to Throwback Thursday, InsideDefense.com's weekly look back at what was happening on or around this day in years past.

This week four years ago, an assessment from the House Armed Services Committee's Republican staff concluded that $1 trillion in cuts over the next decade would cripple the Pentagon's ability to execute the national military strategy, reducing force structure levels and devastating modernization accounts.

At the time, the White House and Congress were seeking to avoid sequestration, tasking a 12-member panel to craft a plan to cut the deficit by $1.2 billion. However, that effort failed.

Now, Congress is locked in another fight over the budgetary path forward, potentially heading toward a federal government shutdown next week.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran (R-MS) has offered a stopgap spending measure, or a continuing resolution, that would fund the federal government until Dec. 11, though his legislation is dead-on-arrival with Democrats because it would strip all funding from Planned Parenthood. The White House has also issued a statement threatening to veto Cochran's short-term CR in the unlikely event it is passed.

Lawmakers have until Oct. 1 to pass some kind of spending measure for fiscal year 2016 to avert a shutdown.

Story link: http://insidedefense.com/defensealert/house-gop-staff-assessment-sizes-potential-impact-1-trillion-defense-cuts