Defense Lawmakers Cautiously Optimistic On Budget Deal – But It’s Just A 1st Step

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http://breakingdefense.com/2013/12/defense-lawmakers-cautiously-optimistic-on-budget-deal/



Defense Lawmakers Cautiously Optimistic On Budget Deal – But It’s Just A 1st Step
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
on December 10, 2013 at 3:52 PM

THE NEWSEUM: In a glass-walled conference center overlooking the snow-shrouded US Capitol, three legislators expressed guarded optimism that Congress could reach a modest budget deal.

The bad news is that such a deal – even one that slows down the automatic spending cuts known as sequestration for the next two years – is just a first step backwards from the brink. So the burning question for the hardcore Navy and Marine Corps supporters at the US Naval Institute conference here, and for the pro-defense lawmakers who addressed them, is how to make the case for defense spending in the longer term.

“We’re shooting for a deal that would provide two years of certainty – a budget for the remainder, and appropriations bills for the remainder, of FY ’14 and also for FY ’15,” said Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, who’d actually prefer Congress go to two-year budgets. Sworn in just in January, the former Virginia governor sits both on Armed Services and in the Budget Conference Committee now thrashing out the budget for fiscal year 2014, which began two months ago. “We’re in the hopefully closing phases of a budget conference that I think will offer some certainty to our military” and add back $20 billion that sequester would have taken away, he said.

“I’m guardedly optimistic,” Kaine said. “I’m actually completely optimistic….The guarded part is just that I’m new enough (that) I have not yet completely honed my ability to determine is it real or is it Memorex.”