HASC’s Wittman Rallies Republicans To Stop Sequester

[unhappycamper]

http://breakingdefense.com/2014/07/optimistic-wittman-rallies-republicans-to-stop-2016-sequester/



HASC’s Wittman Rallies Republicans To Stop Sequester
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on July 16, 2014 at 4:00 AM

WASHINGTON: The chairman of the House Armed Services readiness subcommittee, Rep. Rob Wittman, is strikingly optimistic about the chances for consummating the so-called grand bargain and ending the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration.

When I buttonholed him after a Tuesday Defense Writers’ Group breakfast, Wittman went so far as to say that “I think there’s great potential” for the deal that’s eluded lawmakers since 2011, in which Democrats would accept cuts to entitlement spending and Republicans would accept increases in government revenue to end the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration.

Just don’t call them the spending increases tax increases, Wittman made emphatically clear. “There’s a lot of hesitancy if it’s a tax increase, (but) loopholes and exemptions, there’s been a lot of talk about which ones of those would you rescind,” he told me. House Ways & Means Committee chairman Dave Camp has put together a package of “reasonable reforms,” Wittman said. “Some of them I don’t agree with, (but) there are places where you’ve had a lot of agreement, (and) it does raise revenue, yes.”

That said, a grand or even petty bargain on taxes and entitlements is out of Wittman’s hands. The same goes for all his House Armed Services colleagues. So what they have concentrated on is a campaign to educate other members on the dangers of defense cuts. The crucial prize: the incoming freshman class of the next Congress, when 56 seats will turn over due to retirements alone.

--

To recap:
* Congress does not renew unemployment insurance
* Congress cuts Food Stamps
* Congress ignores VA funding