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Sequestration

On Thursday, September 13, 2012, the House considered H.R. 6365: The National Security and Job Protection Act. This legislation is not a serious attempt to address sequestration, which is scheduled to go into effect on January 2, 2013 if Congress does not act. By way of reminder, last summer’s Budget Control Act (which I did not support) set an overall spending amount for Fiscal Year 2013 and directed a Super Committee to come up with a plan to reduce the deficit. If an agreement could not be reached, then automatic budget cuts would go into effect every year for ten years. This is not the way to responsibly balance the federal budget.

Republicans agree with that, but still refuse to consider a balanced approach to replacing sequestration. In fact, this bill doesn’t do much of anything to address sequestration. H.R. 6365 directs the President to submit legislation to Congress by October 15th that essentially replaces the 2013 sequestration. It requires the President to submit a bill that cuts the same amount of money from the FY 2013 budget as sequestration would have; it prohibits any new revenue from being included in the equation and it removes the firewall between defense and non-defense programs. That means the impact on non-defense programs will be even worse.

Let’s remember that the Republican-led House signed off on sequestration when the Budget Control Act passed. A year later, they are telling the President — House Members don’t like what passed last year, you come up with something else. Republican leaders should get serious about advancing plans that reduce the deficit responsibly. I voted NO. H.R. 6365 passed and the entire vote is recorded below:

• Research H.R. 6365 on Congress.gov
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