Senate hawks seek to lift caps on Pentagon budget

Hawkish US senators are coalescing for a strong vote in the Senate in a bid to remove a cap on the Pentagon budget, according to a report.

Pro-defense lawmakers think that there is a better chance of persuading the Senate to increase the Pentagon budget as raising the spending caps is not seen as a priority for House Speaker John Boehner, The Hill reported.

“He says, ‘You got to cut spending, you got to cut spending.’ He’s not only not enthusiastic, he’s fundamentally opposed. That’s a problem,” one Republican senator said of Boehner.

Boehner, a Republican from Ohio, said Friday that he did not want to raise the caps, set in 2011 following a budget deal, which triggered across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester.

“We’re going to attempt to work to increase the defense numbers without breaking the Budget Control Act,” he said on Fox Business Network. “You know, there’s a reason why the deficit was half of what it was four years ago, and that’s because we insisted on cutting spending in exchange for increasing the debt ceiling.”

The Pentagon and its allies in Congress are desperate to reverse the self-imposed sequester. The White House is also willing to lift the caps as long as ceilings are also removed on domestic spending.

Senate Republicans say they are willing to increase spending for domestic programs, as demanded by the Democrats, to build enough bipartisan support for a broader deal to reveres cuts to the military budget.

“I don’t think you’re going to get defense relief without dealing somehow with non-defense. It’s going to take Democratic buy in to get this done,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a member of the Armed Services Committee who is running for president.

Senate Republicans hope that if a deal is reached with a strong bipartisan vote in the Senate, House critics such as Boehner might also accept it.

“If there was a deal then obviously he wouldn’t obstruct it,” an unnamed GOP senator told The Hill.

Last month, the House Budget Committee unveiled a budget proposal for 2016 that puts a $523 billion cap on the base Pentagon budget. The blueprint has set up a confrontation with defense hawks who want a $577 billion base budget and $51 billion for overseas wars.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter warned Congress at the time that President Barack Obama would veto any military budget plans that leave sequestration caps in place.

HRJ/HRJ

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