As expected, the Senate today approved a two-year budget deal and will send it to President Obama’s desk, staving off the threat of a partial government shutdown. The bill cleared on a 64-36 vote and passed despite the objections of Republican senators to a provision that cuts billions from military retiree benefits. “It’s not correct, and it should not happen,” Senator Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said of the cuts to veterans.
The majority of lawmakers, though, were eager to avoid another budget brawl two months after the last shutdown. The bill had already passed the House on a strong bipartisan vote. The bill sets in place a spending plan for the next two years, while undoing some of the sequester spending cuts, upsetting fiscal conservatives. It remains unclear how lawmakers will address a looming deadline early next year to raise the debt ceiling.
The budget will restore $45 billion to the Pentagon and some domestic agencies lifting them above $1 trillion. That equates to half the amount scheduled to be automatically cut from the 2014 operating budgets for those agencies. An additional $18 billion for 2015 would provide enough relief to essentially freeze spending at those levels for the year.
The provision cutting the inflation increases of pensions for military retirees was perhaps the most unpopular. Members of the military are eligible to retire after 20 years at half-pay. The provision was included in the bill at the direction of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis. Senator Sessions tried to push an amendment blocking those cuts but was stymied by Democrats on the floor with the help of several Republicans.
While I’m not counting on it, top Democrats said Wednesday they would revisit the change in military pensions before it takes effect. Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash., who negotiated the bill with Ryan, said lawmakers would at least reverse the impact on disabled retirees calling their inclusion a mistake.
Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., a former prisoner of war, was among the few willing to defend the benefit cut. “We cannot have continued increases in costs and benefits forever because of our inability to fund our national security,” McCain said. “In other words, the dramatic increase in personnel and benefit costs are such that we really aren’t going to have money left over for the mission, the equipment, and the capabilities.”
The budget deal allows lawmakers to claim a modest accomplishment as they leave a bitterly divided Washington. It sets the stage in January for the pragmatic-minded House and Senate Appropriations committees to draft a trillion-dollar-plus omnibus spending bill combining the 12 annual appropriations bills for the budget year that began October 1. It would provide $1.012 trillion for fiscal 2014 year already underway, a $45 billion increase over what would be required under the penalty imposed by the 2011 budget deal.
Due to the design of the automatic cuts, even with the boost, the Pentagon still would see its non-war 2014 budget essentially frozen at 2013 levels while domestic agencies would see an increase of about 4 percent. But those levels remain well below what was envisioned in the 2011 budget pact. The cuts would be replaced with money from things such as higher airline security fees, a requirement that new federal workers pay more toward their pensions, the 1-percentage-point cut in the pensions of working-age military retirees and premium increases on companies whose pension plans are insured by the federal government.
I guess my biggest question would be, why is the government insuring pension plans for non-governmental companies and can not do the same for those who offered their lives for their government and country?