Senate Democrats will not support plans to exempt defense accounts from mandatory spending caps while squeezing nondefense spending, the Senate Budget Committee's senior Democrat vowed Wednesday.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., decried looming sequestration spending limits to military and nondefense accounts as shortsighted, unnecessary and devastating to American families.
But he also said he believes the entire spectrum of budget trims should be dropped, not just the looming Defense Department spending caps that have drawn warnings of weakened national security from Pentagon leaders.
"We're not going to end sequestration just for defense and not for working-class Americans," Sanders told reporters.
The spending caps, authorized by Congress in 2011, have been on hold the last two years, thanks to a short-term budget deal lawmakers reached in late 2013. But sequestration will take effect again this fall unless Congress passes a similar deal or a permanent fix.
If sequestration does resume, the law sets the defense spending cap at $523 billion, below both White House plans and congressional preferences for fiscal 2016. Military leaders repeatedly have stated that the capped spending total would harm national defense, both in terms of money for readiness and modernization.
Several House and Senate Republicans — including Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., chairman of the House Budget Committee — have discussed the possibility of unlinking the defense and nondefense spending cuts, possibly allowing military spending to rise while other agencies remain bound by sequestration caps.
Democrats have long opposed that idea, as well as similar plans to cut deeper into nondefense spending to pay for a bigger military budget.
Sanders said he is confident any such effort would fail.
Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee are expected to outline their fiscal 2016 spending priorities next week. Sanders said Democrats will not offer an alternative budget plan, but are preparing a host of amendments for committee and full chamber debate to make that proposal more palatable to their caucus.
Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.
