Club for Growth, the fiscally conservative watchdog group, has registered its opposition to a plan put forward by a group of House and Senate Republican defense hard-liners to avoid the first year of sequestration.
In the Republican legislation from House Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon, R-Calif., and Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., a 10-percent reduction in the federal workforce over the next decade would replace the first year of sequestration.
This did not sit well with Club for Growth President Chris Chocola.
“Pushing off spending cuts that Congress promised to make is simply wrong,” Chocola said in a statement on Friday.
“Fiscal conservatives should insist that the full amount of cuts are made now, and should oppose replacing them with promised cuts that could be abolished by future Congresses.”
The plan, introduced by a group of seven lawmakers on Wednesday, was presented as the most painless way to avoid the cuts to the Pentagon.
The plan is similar to legislation from the last Congress that went nowhere in either chamber. This time around, the bill would reverse the $85 billion in 2013 cuts to both defense and non-defense discretionary spending by rehiring only one federal worker for every three who leave.
Chocola noted that House Republicans have said they are willing to let sequester occur, and advised Senate Republicans to “follow their lead.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is of a different mind.
Graham told reporters at Wednesday’s press conference that Republicans who were comfortable with letting the defense cuts happen had “lost your way as much as the president.”
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