President Obama is sending a $4 trillion budget to Congress this morning, and Democrats in the region are glad it calls for lifting budget caps on most federal agencies.
Remember sequestration? It’s those indiscriminate budget cuts that rip through most every federal agency. Many first term lawmakers like Virginia Democratic Senator Tim Kaine say it’s dumb for that deal to tie lawmaker’s hands now.
“And to say, well we need to just go down the sequester path because it was voted on in August of ‘11 -- I wasn’t here. I don’t have any loyalty to the vote. I think it’s foolish.”
Kaine isn’t alone. The White House budget calls for them to be lifted by adding an additional seventy four billion dollars in federal spending next year. Kaine says that makes sense.
“Budget cutting across the board makes no sense. In 2011, when Congress voted on the sequester we weren’t engaged in a war against ISIL, we weren’t fighting the vigorous North Korean cyber hacking, we weren’t facing a Russia that was now moving into Crimea, Ukraine and other countries, we weren’t dealing with a collapsing Libya, we weren’t dealing with a collapsing Syria, Ebola wasn’t a problem.”
Many Republicans say sequestration is the only thing restraining federal spending, though they’re fighting to ease its cuts on the military by slashing spending on social programs.
