Lawmakers Ready Budget Fallback Options Amid Tax Impasse
This article is for subscribers only.
With less than three weeks until their deadline, U.S. budget negotiators have yet to break an impasse over revenue, prompting lawmakers to draft plans to blunt $19 billion in defense cuts set to start in January.
One idea -- known as “smoothing” -- would redistribute the 2014 reductions across the 10-year timeframe of the automatic Pentagon cuts known as sequestration. Instead of the cuts hitting in January, defense spending next year would remain at or higher than the current $518 billion level, with greater reductions coming in future years.