Can Anyone Stop the Defense Ax?
Republicans in Congress strategize to spare Defense from the automatic chopping block
This article is for subscribers only.
Congress narrowly averted an unprecedented U.S. default in August—agreeing to cut $900 billion from the federal budget immediately and $1.2 trillion more by Thanksgiving. That did not stop Standard & Poor’s from downgrading U.S. debt. But it did instill just enough confidence to calm Washington and mollify the markets, at least for a time.
The reason for that confidence was that further cuts would either be identified by the bipartisan supercommittee or, if that failed, through a “sequester”—non-negotiable cuts over a decade, evenly divided between domestic and military spending. This is an outcome neither Democrats nor Republicans want. And that’s the whole point: The idea was to make failure unpleasant enough to compel agreement.