FA-18 hornet
Five senators, John McCain (R-AZ), Jon Kyl (R-AZ. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Joe Lieberman, (I-CT) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), have announced their intention to renege on the deficit deal agreed to by Congress and the White House in August, and attempt to circumvent the automatic defense cuts that were agreed to be part of the consequences should the Super Congress fail. Gee, that doesn't sound like Joe Lieberman at all, does it.
Formal legislation will likely hit the Hill sometime in January, when Congress returns from the Christmas break, Ayotte said today. The freshman senator was light on details but she was clear the legislation would shift the $500 billion in spending cuts from the Pentagon's budget and move them into other agencies budgets. Tough times demand tough decisions, Graham told reporters at the same event, but the times demand that "the first check you write should be for defense.

The devil [will be] in the details" Todd Harrison, a defense budget expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, added. Finding spending cuts outside the Pentagon will force the group to either increase tax revenues, cut entitlement programs like Medicare or Social Security or adopt a slate of politically unpalatable options, Harrison said. And after all that, there is no guarantee that the Pentagon will be spared the budget ax, he added. Summing up the monumental task facing Ayotte's group, Harrison said if there was a deficit reduction plan that could spare defense spending "the Super Committee would have come up with it.