Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) articulated very different approaches to the $85 billion in looming spending cuts in Fox News Sunday appearances, underlining the split within the Republican party on the consequences of the gut.
Defense hawk Graham said the cuts would devastate the military, while Tea Party conservative Paul argued that the sequester is not really a cut at all.
Graham said President Obama was shirking his duty as commander in chief by allowing the cuts to come into effect on March 1.
"On his watch we are going to unravel the greatest military in the world,” he said. “Iran is watching us...we are allowing people to be slaughtered in Syria.”
Graham said that the Senate Democratic proposal to replace the sequester with more tailored defense cuts, farm program cuts and tax increases was laughable.
“Let's put Obamacare on the table,” he said.
Paul was far more comfortable with allowing sequetration.
He said that while the across-the-board nature of the cuts, which will be accomplished by a type of seizure known as sequestration, is not idea, the cuts are needed.
“Ideally we would have done the right thing and passed appropriation bills...the sequester is sort of a hammer,” he said.
But he added that the sequester and 8 years of similar cuts slated to take effect still leave spending on an upward path.
“The sequester is really a reduction in the rate of growth of spending, it is not a real cut in spending,” he said. “Even with the sequester, spending will still rise overall.”
Paul denounced Obama for listing new programs in his State of the Union and proposing to pay for them with tax increases and said that attempts by Obama to paint the GOP as the party protecting tax breaks for the wealthy were empty and false.
For more on Grahm and Paul's comments, click here.
