Senator, vet Inouye warns against defense cuts - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Senator, vet Inouye warns against defense cuts

The powerful chairman of the influential Senate Appropriations Committee said Thursday that cutting federal spending will not be enough by itself to solve the nation’s budget problems and warned against deep cuts in the defense budget.

Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, a Medal of Honor recipient for heroism in World War II, issued a rare statement Thursday as Congress faces rising pressure to reach agreement on federal debt and spending to avoid a national default on Aug. 2, when the U.S. would run out of both borrowing power and cash.

Inouye noted that that since the 2001 terrorist attacks, defense and war-related costs have grown 74 percent after adjustment for inflation. “These costs are clearly related to the cost of countering terrorism, defending the homeland and supporting a much larger veteran population,” Inouye said.

Defense can be cut, but “we need an honest debate on how much is needed to preserve our security,” he said. “We can only substantially cut these programs at our nation’s peril.”

Non-defense federal spending “has been essentially unchanged from 2001” and is also not ripe for big cuts, Inouye added.

His resistance to federal budget cuts, not unexpected from the leader of the Senate committee that allocates funds to federal agencies, is a sign of the problems facing Congress as it tries to figure out what to do now that the nation has reached the $14.3 trillion limit on borrowing and has been tapping cash reserves to pay bills.

Inouye and other Democrats in the Senate are seeking to protect discretionary federal spending from cuts, and resistance is growing in the House and Senate to dramatic changes in federal entitlement programs because polls show most Americans oppose that.

House Republicans also vow to vote no on any agreement with a hint of tax increases.

“The focus of our deficit talks should not be on domestic discretionary spending, but on the real reason why we are not running a surplus: historically low revenues, soaring mandatory spending, and the cost of war,” Inouye said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., warned Thursday that a national default “would plunge the United States not into a recession, not into a so-called double-dip recession but into a full blow depression, and that is without a doubt.”

He added that it would be felt not just in the U.S., but around the world.

Reid repeated a warning, first issued by Treasury Department officials, that a freeze on military pay would be one effect if the U.S. goes into default.

Reid announced Thursday that the Senate would forego a planned weeklong Fourth of July recess in order to work on a debt and spending deal.

A rough agreement calls for any increase in the debt ceiling to be matched or exceeded by cuts in spending, so that a $1 trillion increase in the $14.3 trillion debt limit would have to be paired with at least $1 trillion in spending cuts.

President Obama has proposed $400 billion in additional defense cuts over 10 years that could be part of that agreement, although the Obama reductions would not take effect before fiscal 2013 and may not achieve much savings in the first few years.