Lawmakers are always eager to make promises about spending cuts or ground-breaking reforms . . . as long as they don’t kick in until much later. In some cases, that means reducing spending, but only once one is out of the White House. As DefenseNews reports, the president will proposed to partially waive sequester cuts by proposing to reduce defense spending by $100 billion — starting in 2019.
The White House is preparing to submit a fiscal 2014 federal budget that would partially offset across-the-board sequestration cuts by reducing the Pentagon budget by $100 billion, but not until later this decade, according to a senior defense official and budget documents.
Obama administration officials are pushing these Defense Department spending cuts, along with an additional $100 billion in nondefense discretionary spending — for a total of $200 billion in cuts — as part of a $4 trillion deficit reduction plan that has been offered to House Republican leadership.
The $100 billion in defense cuts would not begin until 2019, according to Frank Kendall, the Pentagon acquisition chief.
Who wants to bet that the president’s budget bargain offer to pro-defense Republicans these defense cuts in exchange for tax increases?
The whole thing is here.