Kaine, Rigell press case for budget compromise

Lawmakers in Washington have heard a fair amount about a couple of Norfolk-based Navy captains recently – and likely will continue to in the next couple days as they decide whether to approve a budget compromise hammered out this week, Sen. Tim Kaine admits.

"I've mentioned them a lot," Kaine said Wednesday.

He said he's been making a case for a budget compromise by repeating comments they made to him during a recent visit to Norfolk about how much they and their sailors rely on civilian Defense Department staff and the workers at BAE Systems Ship Repair.

His point is that government shutdowns that furlough civilian DoD staff and across-the-board spending cuts that hit defense contractors also hurt men and women in uniform. He's hoping that word leads Congress to approve the compromise reached by the budget conference committee this week.

Rep. Scott Rigell, R-Virginia Beach, has been doing much the same.

He stood up when the GOP House caucus gathered Wednesday morning to relay what sailors from admirals to master chiefs have been telling him about how a lack of a real budget is hurting the nation's defense.

"I've got colleagues, maybe they come from a place where there's not much military presence, or no bases, and I think it is part of my job to help them understand what we see in Hampton Roads," he said.

Rigell and Kaine agree that relying on continuing resolutions – the short-term agreements that say the government can continue spending what it had been spending – instead of actually writing a budget harms the military's ability to plan.

And the automatic across-the-board budget cuts, which Washingtonians call sequester, can be devastating. Those cuts kicked in this spring because Congress couldn't agree on a budget then.

"They rob us of efficiency," Rigell said. "It's almost like your defense dollar buys you only 70 cents or 80 cents of defense, because of the uncertainty" and because sometimes the last component of what the military needs to make an entire system work can't be acquired.

The agreement, which says the U.S. government will spend $1.01 trillion this year and roughly the same in 2015, isn't everything either was hoping for.

"But that's what compromise is," said Kaine, who is disappointed by the cuts in cost-of-living allowances going forward for military retirees younger than 62, as well as by the increased contributions to pensions to be demanded by people the government hires in the years to come.

But it does prevent another $20 billion of defense spending cuts from kicking in, "and shows we could find a path to compromise," he added.

"My hope is the budget compromise allows us to step away from the irrational harm of sequestration," said Sen. Mark Warner, who like Kaine is a member of the budget conference committee that crafted the compromise.

The House and Senate must still vote on the agreement.

And, warns Rigell, his experience shows compromise isn't always the easiest thing to sell.

"It's not a slam dunk," he said.

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