HASC GOP Leaders Cross Fingers For Senate Elections

http://breakingdefense.com/2014/09/hasc-gop-leaders-cross-fingers-for-elections/



HASC GOP Leaders Cross Fingers For Senate Elections
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on September 10, 2014 at 7:58 AM

Despite concurrent crises in Ukraine and Iraq, defense issues will hardly decide the November elections — but the outcome of those elections will prove decisive for defense. The top candidates for the chairmanship of the House Armed Services Committee both told me that they have their fingers crossed for a GOP takeover of the Senate as the best chance of sparing the military budget from sequestration cuts. It also helps, Mac Thornberry and Randy Forbes said, that their House GOP colleagues are returning to the party’s traditional appreciation of a strong defense in the face of rising threats. Though neither man was impolitic enough to say so aloud, an electoral drubbing for the Tea Party wing of the GOP would help a lot.

The crucial question of sequestration won’t be addressed until the new Congress takes shape, Thornberry said Friday afternoon, calling on the way home from a GOP event at the Newport News shipyard. “My guess is we’ll do a CR (continuing resolution) in September to get us beyond the election,” the HASC vice-chairman said, then vote the full appropriations for 2015 in the lame-duck session.

“The key for sequestration is not till fiscal year ’16, so that gives us next spring and summer to work on a new budget. Hopefully, we’ll have a budget for a change that actually passes the House and the Senate,” Thornberry continued. “A big part of our problem has been the Senate has just been a black hole into which everything falls.”

“If you want to change the direction we’re going, you have to change the Senate,” echoed Randy Forbes, who also called me after the Friday afternoon event at Newport News. “The Republicans in the House (already) passed a budget that got rid of sequestration for defense,” the HASC seapower subcommittee chairman said, but it went nowhere in the Democratic Senate (a foregone conclusion, since it made sharp cuts to domestic programs). If the GOP controls the Senate in 2015, a new House proposal will at least get a vote, Forbes said, “and if it comes up for a vote, it’s going to pass.”


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Uuuuuh.

I thought sequestration was supposed to take $50 billion from social programs AND $50 billion from the military budget every year for ten tears.

So the GOP wants to get that military $50 billion from where?