Budget/Appropriations

The proposed amendment to the pending defense authorization bill that could allow American citizens who are suspected of terrorism to be denied a civilian trial. 

Sen. Harry Reid says he wants to avoid another year on stopgap spending measures funding the government.

Senate Democrats are looking to finish work on the 2012 Defense appropriations bill by Thursday, a stepped-up pace that seems likely to leave dozens of amendments to the bill in the dust.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) warned senators twice on Monday that they need to come to the floor and speak in favor of their amendments if they hope to have them considered. He said there are already 100 pending amendments, but said time is running short given the Thursday target deadline.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Monday accused Democrats and the White House of intentionally sabotaging the deficit-cutting supercommittee's work in order to gain a political edge in the 2012 elections. 

"It’s hard to escape the conclusion that some in the White House and even some Democrats here in the Senate were rooting for failure and doing what they could to ensure it," McConnell said, speaking on the Senate floor for the first time since the panel announced its failure last week. 

Fiscal pressures appear likely to force the U.S. Army and Marine Corps to get smaller, one defense analyst says — but he warns against cutting too deep.

Nathan Freier of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Army War College notes in a recent report that the “political and fiscal environment does not bode well for U.S. ground forces.”

Mitt Romney on Sunday called for President Obama to halt the automatic cuts aimed at Defense after the supercommittee failure.

As the Pentagon eyes programs to face the budget axe, weapons programs will be the easiest targets for quick cuts, a budget analyst said Wednesday.

Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the Center on Strategic Budgetary Assessments, said that acquisitions would likely total to 50 percent of the Pentagon’s cuts under sequestration, even though they only make up about a third of the defense budget.

It comes down to timing, Harrison said.

Senate Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) released an analysis this week showing that the Defense Department would suffer much more than other programs under the automatic cuts to planned spending that Congress is now required to make.

As other Republicans in the Senate have done, Sessions said he believes the Defense cuts go “too far,” and said the nearly $500 billion cut over 10 years would force the growth in Defense spending far lower than the growth in other programs.

While Democrats want the savings for economic stimulus, the Defense Department is eyeing the money to offset looming budget cuts.

The top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee said Tuesday that Congress should re-examine the $500 billion in Defense Department cuts that have been triggered now that the congressional supercommittee has failed to come up with a recommendation on how to trim the deficit.

"I believe it will go too far in cutting the Defense Department," Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said on CNN. "We need to re-look at this sequester, make sure that the cuts are across the board far more, and not so heavily directed toward the Defense Department."