Blame the Chinese Spy ballon program…
(The Ukraine can breath easy…)
With Senate Republicans against Defense and Social Security cuts?
I guess a Debt Ceiling increase is a lock?
“The entire civilized world should recognize that communist China is probably the greatest threat we’ve ever faced, more severe than Soviet Russia was because of its economic integration into the West,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) after receiving a briefing from senior administration officials on the spy balloon. “We should take every step we can to try to reduce our dependency on China [and] try to build stronger military deterrence against them.
“I do not think that we should be talking about cutting the defense budget at all right now. If anything, substantial defense increases,” he said.
Defense cuts weren’t popular with most Republicans even before the controversy surrounding the Chinese spy balloon, which was shot down off the coast of South Carolina a week ago Saturday.
But the balloon controversy, which some see as underlining an aggressive stance from Beijing, has become a No. 1 reason to draw a line against defense cuts.
“Having a strong robust national security is essential to deterring bad behavior,” said Senate Republican Whip John Thune (R-S.D.). “I think it’s OK to try to find savings and do the audits and do all that sort of thing to become more efficient, but just willy-nilly saying we’re going to cut defense I think would be a mistake.” …
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“We’re probably going to need more and not less with regard to that. The primary responsibility of the Congress of the United States is the defense of our country and this one is a serious threat,” he said of China.
The tough GOP line on defense spending could make it even harder to reach a deal on spending cuts — which House and Senate Republicans are demanding as a price for raising the debt ceiling.
Democrats are against cuts to discretionary domestic spending and certainly do not want to reduce social spending if the Pentagon’s budget is not going to be touched….
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“Whatever gets done will be a trim at best,” said Jim Kessler, the executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank.
“One out of every ten federal employees is a law enforcement official,” he noted. “Who are we cutting from the border or from the FBI or TSA? I think this gets hard.
“Governing is a lot harder than being in the opposition. Kevin McCarthy is going to learn that,” he said…
Note…
Cuts to approved IRS budegt would be INCREASING any budget deficit (they bring in Money for the Government, eh?) going forward for years….