Local lawmakers hope to blunt sequestration hit

Members of South Hampton Roads' congressional delegation said Wednesday they support a federal budget deal that would reduce the impact of automatic defense cuts over the next two years and salvage lucrative Navy ship repair work that employs thousands in the region.

A day after House and Senate negotiators announced a compromise plan that, if approved, would avoid another government shutdown in January, local Democratic and Republican lawmakers voiced support for the plan. None were happy with all details, but they agreed the measure would avoid deeper damage to Virginia's federally dependent economy and could spark more compromise on other issues.

U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine said the compromise "will avoid the foolishness of furloughs and shutdowns and brinkmanship that have characterized way too much of the congressional approach to budgeting over the last number of years."

"This a good step," U.S. Sen. Mark Warner told the Virginia Chamber of Commerce during a Capitol Hill luncheon, noting that the proposal offers partial relief from the threat of automatic spending cuts, known as sequestration.

"In many ways, Virginia is ground zero for the sequester," he told business executives.

U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes, who has expressed alarm that defense spending has been cut too deeply for several years, told the lunch crowd he supports the compromise but said it doesn't allay his concerns.

"I don't really think it's a step forward," the Chesapeake Republican said. "I think it's an inch forward, but it's much better to inch forward than a deepening spiral downward.... The good thing about this compromise is it stops the hemorrhaging that we've seen in national defense."

Forbes, a leader of the House Armed Services Committee, said the spending plan addresses a major complaint of military commanders - that they don't have clarity from Congress about how much money they have to spend.

U.S. Rep. Scott Rigell acknowledged that the proposal makes incremental changes, but he said it's necessary.

"It's a principled compromise, not a compromising of principles," the Virginia Beach Republican said.

U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, a Newport News Democrat, was unavailable for comment; the day the deal was struck, he was in South Africa for the funeral of former President Nelson Mandela.

The House is expected to vote on the measure today, a day before its Christmas recess begins; the Senate will vote next week.

The proposal calls for a fiscal year 2014 budget of $1.012 trillion - about $26 billion more than the government spent in 2013. In 2015, the budget would rise to $1.014 trillion.

As part of a deal, the government would offset some cuts by raising new revenue and cutting back on other expenses. Among the changes are levying higher security fees on airline tickets, requiring federal workers to contribute more to their pension plans and ending cost-of-living increases on the pensions of working-age military retirees - those between the ages of 40 and 62.

The deal would avoid $63 billion in automatic budget cuts over the next two years. A chunk of the military cuts - $20 billion worth - was set to begin in January. Navy officials have said the cuts would force it to reduce some military operations and training, cancel some ship construction projects and halt the planned overhaul of Navy ships in private yards in Hampton Roads.

Just over half of the automatic cuts this year - about $30 billion - and most of the reductions for 2015 would still happen. But the deal would change the rules about how the cuts are carried out over the next two years, giving lawmakers more leeway deciding where to cut. Rather than requiring the military services to make across-the-board cuts, Congress's budget writers could make more targeted reductions in 2014 and 2015.

Navy leaders, for example, have said the reductions would be more palatable if they were able to shift money between accounts.

The current compromise doesn't address mandatory cuts after 2015. Sequestration requires automatic trims through 2022.

Warner and Kaine acknowledged the region could still see reductions in defense spending next year, depending on how Congress decides to allocate Pentagon funds.

This allows for the "normal budget battles" in Congress over how best to allocate defense funds among the service branches, Warner said. "Sequester was stupidity on steroids... this is a less stupid way to go about cuts."

Warner and others have pushed for a broader budget deal that would halt sequestration entirely and - through a combination of entitlement reforms and raising more revenue - trim deficit spending and reduce the fast-rising national debt.

"This is not a moment to declare victory. This is progress," Warner said.

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