Senate Republicans on Thursday offered a plan to delay for a year more than $1 trillion in mandatory cuts ? half of which would come from the Pentagon ? by trimming the federal workforce and extending a pay freeze for federal employees imposed by the Obama administration.
At a news conference, the senators appealed to President Barack Obama to negotiate on the proposal, noting that it contained ideas Democrats have previously supported. They quoted Defense Secretary Leon Panetta?s dire warning that allowing the cuts to take effect in January would be ?shooting ourselves in the head.?
Continue ReadingSen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), said Panetta ?either needs to be fired because he?s so off-base or we need to listen to him and fix the problem ? this is now a time for both parties to come together and fix something that has to be fixed.?
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called the GOP effort to undo sequestration ?unfair? and vowed to oppose the legislation.
?I believe that an agreement is an agreement. I believe that a handshake is a handshake. Here we have more than a handshake ? we have a law that is in place in our country,? Reid said at a news conference. ?They should keep their word. That?s what the American people expect them to do, and that?s what I expect them to do.?
Other Democrats also panned the proposal, sticking to their insistence that increased tax revenues be part of the solution.
?If Republicans are serious about replacing the automatic spending cuts,? Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said, ?then they are going to need to work with Democrats to find an equal amount of balanced deficit reduction that doesn?t simply increase the pain for the middle class.?
The GOP senators? legislation centers on using attrition to cut the federal workforce by 5 percent. That, along with the pay freeze extension, is expected to save $127 billion over 10 years. Those savings would be applied to the $109 billion needed to cover the first year of the $1.2 trillion in mandated cuts.
Scott Wong contributed to this report.
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