White House Press Secretary Jay Carney seemed to express doubt that Congress would actually enact the deficit reduction measures scheduled to go into effect next year if the deficit reduction committee fails to reach a compromise.
“I think they kick in but they don’t begin to take effect for a year,” Carney said today of the automatic cuts that comprise the trigger in the recent debt-ceiling deal. “Now, you’re asking me will Congress — if this were to come to pass and how Congress would react next year, I would hesitate to speculate on that,” he added.
Carney’s uncertainty about whether Congress will enact the cuts seems to indicate that the so-called Supercommittee might be under less pressure to reach a deficit reduction compromise than previously thought.
The automatic trigger included in the debt-ceiling deal cuts $1.2 trillion in across-the-board government spending, with half that money coming from the Department of Defense budget. “Along with the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the Army, I share concern about the potential of sequestration [another name for the trigger], which will bring a total reduction of over a trillion dollars for [the] department of defense,” General Raymond Odierno, Army Chief of Staff, told Congress in a hearing today.
“Cuts of this magnitude will be catastrophic to the military,” he added, “denying the military superiority [that] our nation requires in today’s and tomorrow’s uncertain security environment.”
He also said that, if the trigger cuts go into effect, “the nation would incur an unacceptable level of strategic and operational risk.”
Carney said today that “the sequestration part of this is onerous enough to hopefully compel Congress to act . . . hopefully they’ll do that,” he added.
