Va. lawmakers know uphill fight awaits defense budget

Federal legislators return to Washington today after a five-week recess, and the infamously dysfunctional Congress will be scrambling to avoid a partial shutdown when the government runs out of money Sept. 30.

Most of the congressmen and senators representing Hampton Roads - where almost half the economy is built on federal dollars - say such a possibility should be avoided at all costs.

But there's no guarantee, they said.

Not that the budget will be the only thing on their plates this month - Pope Francis will visit Washington, and there will be a debate and vote on the Iran nuclear pact.

Hampton Roads' federal lawmakers are among those who acknowledge that, given the deep ideological differences that have stifled compromise, no annual budget will be approved by the time the 2016 fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

At best, congressional leaders could avoid a shutdown by passing a bill called a continuing resolution, which temporarily would keep funding the government at current levels. The resolution can be for a few months or as much as a year.

Such resolutions, used by Congress with regularity in recent years, come with their own costs to the military, defense contractors and others.

"If we're at the end of September and there's a CR, there's going to be damage," Sen. Mark Warner said. "The damage comes from potentially raises not going through, projects not going through, new starts not happening... because you are really just continuing last year's budget without any new programmatic direction."

Rep. Scott Rigell said the repeated approval of temporary spending plans wastes billions of dollars.

"I'm convinced we're losing 20 to 30 percent efficiency on every dollar that we spend in defense. Just the lack of certainty comes with a cost," the Virginia Beach Republican said.

A short-term spending plan adds extra expenses for major contractors, including Newport News Shipbuilding, which builds aircraft carriers and submarines, and to the Navy because leaders are forced to shift money around as they await a new budget, he said.

"It's a holding pattern - just like it's costing the airlines millions of dollars a year when they have to circle airports," Rigell said.

Among the core issues in the budget debate is sequestration, which requires Congress to trim more than $1 trillion over 10 years with half the money coming out of defense and half from domestic programs.

Republicans have pressed for a budget that would avoid almost $40 billion in automatic defense cuts by putting the money in the Pentagon's overseas war account, which is exempt from the automatic cuts.

But President Barack Obama and Democratic legislators oppose that, saying a broader plan to address all the automatic cuts is necessary. Rep. Bobby Scott said the most glaring problem is that no one is willing to talk about raising significantly more revenue to keep federal programs intact.

The Newport News Democrat has long argued that Congress - particularly Republicans - has been unwilling to accept the argument that getting rid of sequestration requires raising more money.

"There's no serious discussion," Scott said. "You at least have to include choices that include revenues."

With many legislators pledging not to raise taxes, "the arithmetic doesn't work," he said.

Scott said, for example, if income from capital gains and dividends were taxed like a person's paycheck, the cuts wouldn't be needed.

"Dividends used to be one of the highest-taxed incomes. Now it's the lowest," he said.

It is dangerous to even broach the subject, he said.

"For a Republican, if you start talking about raising taxes, they're going to get you in a primary," Scott said. "There is no political upside to being responsible."

Warner and Rigell have said any solution to reach a true budget compromise has to include new tax revenue.

One place to start, Warner said, is a shared desire by Democrats and Republicans to find money for the Highway Trust Fund, which will run out of cash in December. The fund pays the federal share of state and local infrastructure projects.

"What you need is something to break the logjam," Warner said.

Sen. Tim Kaine said he remains optimistic that Congress can find a way in the next few months to adopt a two-year spending plan - as was done in late 2013. The two-year budget was crafted in the wake of a 16-day partial federal shutdown and staved off some across-the-board automatic cuts with a combination of new revenue and program cuts.

"We can get this done," Kaine said. "There are certainly a number of Republicans that serve with me on Budget and Armed Services (committees) that want to do a deal."

To avoid a shutdown, Republican leaders must also block some conservative lawmakers from linking approval with the removal of funding for Planned Parenthood.

The defunding threat is a reaction to the release of secretly taped videos of Planned Parenthood employees talking about selling aborted fetal tissue for research.

Kaine, a Democrat, noted that GOP leaders in the House and Senate have made clear that a shutdown "is a very bad idea."

"The question is: Can they control their caucuses?" Kaine said.

Rigell, an abortion opponent, said he was sickened by the videos but thinks it's wrong to jeopardize defense spending with a shutdown.

"I cannot govern that way," he said. "You are putting yourselves in a position where you have nothing to negotiate.... How long is it going to be shut down? Families are reeling when this kind of thing happens."

Rigell said he wants to strip Planned Parenthood of the hundreds of millions of dollars it receives every year and allocate the money to other groups to provide the same women's health and family planning services.

When asked about the budget debate and the possibility of a shutdown, Rep. Randy Forbes, a Chesapeake Republican, said in an email that President Barack Obama is to blame for opposing a defense spending plan drafted by the Republican-controlled Congress.

"A predictable budget process is essential for the military, and particularly our men and women in uniform and their families," Forbes wrote. "This administration has repeatedly politicized the effort to appropriately resource our military, with the president threatening to veto the annual defense policy bill and a defense secretary more concerned about the IRS and EPA than removing defense from sequestration."