When the congressional super committee failed to find more than one trillion dollars in budget cuts, it triggered automatic reductions throughout the entire federal budget. It could force the Pentagon to close bases and cut military spending in places like Kentucky.
Military officials in Kentucky and elsewhere are nervous.Starting next year, more than half-trillion dollars is slated to be cut from the Pentagon’s budget. That’s on top of previous budget cuts of four hundred and fifty billion dollars. Right now, Kentucky Republican Congressman Brett Guthrie says there are a lot more questions than answers.
“You know everybody in the military, especially in themilitary, is concerned about where the sequestration is going to go,” said Guthrie.
To potentially save billions of dollars, Pentagon officials are asking Congress for another Base Realignment and Closure Commission –called BRAC. If approved, an outside panel would review all military installations and recommend which ones should be consolidated or closed. Kentucky Democratic Congressman John Yarmuth opposes the idea.
“Well I think right now that would appear to me to be a little premature,” said Yarmuth.
In theory a BRAC commission could shutter either of Kentucky’s signature bases, Fort Campbell and Fort Knox. But Fort Knox just had a facilities upgrade and Fort Campbell is a launching pad for troops headed for combat zones overseas. Those missions comfort Yarmuth and the rest of Kentucky’s delegation.
“I don’t think either of the two major Kentucky facilities would be jeopardized,” said Yarmuth.
Besides the potential for base closures, the pending budget cuts could hit Kentucky in other ways. Experts say it’s unlikely the cuts will fall on the tens of thousands of troops stationed in the Bluegrass State, but contractors who employ thousands of Kentuckians could take a big hit. The Kentucky National Guard is also bracing for budget cuts, but Pentagon officials signal they won’t be as steep as first predicted, though that could change.
The Pentagon could also reduce clean-up funding at the Bluegrass Army Depot where aging, and sometime leaky, chemical munitions are stored. That’s why indiscriminately slicing half a trillion dollars from the Pentagon’s budget isn’t something Kentucky lawmakers want to see, even lawmakers like Senator Rand Paul, who based his campaign on trimming the federal debt.
“Military spending should be prioritized and the one thing about the bases in Kentucky when you rank bases on which are the most important bases I think we’re somewhere in the top 15 on both bases, so I think if you’re ranking, and have to cut spending it probably wouldn’t be there,” said Paul.
Some high profile Republicans now want to unwind the previous agreement to cut federal spending but Paul disagrees.
“I think that it would send a really bad signal four months afterwe said we were going to try to conserve the public funds and try to prevent to debt from accumulating that we would go back on what we just did. I think Wall Street will react very negatively and it would potentially lead to another downgrade of our debt,” said Paul.
Paul says the Pentagon ought to close military installations overseas before they entertain deep domestic cuts.
“I would think that we could save some money by having someof the bases that are in very wealthy countries, have them provide more for their own defense. I think Germany after 60 years could probably have its own base and we probably wouldn’t need a base there,” said Paul.
As painful as the pending budget cuts could be for Kentucky, Democratic Congressman Ben Chandler agrees lawmakers should stick with the bipartisan agreement that set up the automatic cuts.
"This is an agreement that the leadership here in the House signed onto and I think they’re going to either have to live with that agreement or they’re going to have to come up with another grand bargain,” said Chandler.
It’s now an election year, which makes it even harder for lawmakers to reach across the aisle. Republican Congressman Ed Whitfield expects a resolution to the impasse after votes are cast in November.
“I suspect that whoever wins the election in 2012, if wedon’t do anything between now and then, there will be a lot of effort made to readdress some of the issues that are pending because of this automatic sequestration,” said Whitfield.
If the law isn’t changed the steep budget cuts could start hitting the Commonwealth in 20-13. In the mean time Kentucky’s lawmakers in Washington are working to unwind or redirect those cuts.
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