Senate Passes Sessions' Sequestration Transparency Act
By: Stephen Crews
Updated: July 26, 2012
U.S.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL),
Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, issued the following
statement today after the Senate unanimously passed legislation that he
originally co-authored with Senate Republican Conference Chairman John
Thune (R-SD). The Senators' Sequestration Transparency
Act (H.R. 5872), which also passed the House recently by a nearly
unanimous vote of 414-2, will now be sent to the President for his
signature:
"If
the sequester is not re-organized, defense spending--which
makes up just one-sixth of the federal budget--will have to absorb half
of the planned cuts, on top of the $487 billion in defense cuts already
in place over the next decade. Meanwhile, some of the largest
non-defense expenditures are totally exempt from any
cuts whatsoever. I'm glad that Congress has been nearly unanimous in its
recognition that the Obama Administration needs to reveal how it would
move forward with such enormous defense cuts, which the President's own
Defense Secretary said would be 'disastrous
for our national defense.'"
Sessions
and Thune's legislation would require the Office
of Management and Budget, within 30 days of enactment, to provide
Congress and the American people with a report about how it plans to
implement the automatic spending cuts required by the Budget Control Act
(BCA). Despite repeated requests from Members of
Congress from both parties, the Obama Administration has thus far
refused to explain how it will move forward with the $109 billion in
cuts scheduled to take effect on January 2, 2013, half of which will
fall on the Defense Department. The planned cuts are
in addition to the $487 billion in 10-year defense cuts
that were already included in the BCA.
