House and Senate Continue to Spar Over Sequestration

Speaker of the House John Boehner along with other members of the House Republican leadership sent a letter this week to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, urging the Senate to agree to a deal that would prevent sequestration just for defense. Senator Reid responded in letter that read in part:

Democrats have no intention of giving up on balanced deficit reduction. At the same time, we fully agree about the importance of avoiding the so-called fiscal cliff. Toward that end, the Senate recently passed legislation that cuts taxes for 114 million middle class families. By not extending tax breaks that only go to the very wealthy, the bill also produces critical savings that could be used to suspend sequestration as part of a comprehensive deficit reduction package.

Congress is scheduled to go on recess today until Monday September 10^th. When they return, they are expected to pass a six month continuing resolution, but will not tackle sequestration until after the election.

Nancy Conneely, Public Policy Manager

Tags: appropriations, budget, Congress, funding

This entry was posted on Friday, August 3rd, 2012 at 6:12 am and is filed under Legislation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.