Sequestration looms large over Dempsey confirmation hearing

The automatic budget cuts under sequestration loomed large
over Dempsey’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee,
whose members are the biggest proponents in the Senate of reversing the defense
cuts.

{mosads}Defense-minded lawmakers want to reverse sequestration and
have used the warnings from Dempsey and other Pentagon leaders to make their
case that the defense cuts must be averted.

But the defense cuts have remained because Democrats and
Republicans have been unable to solve the broader fiscal issues on entitlement spending
and taxes.

For Republicans on the panel Thursday, Dempsey’s comments
were an indictment of President Obama’s policy toward sequestration.

“General Dempsey, at what point will you advise [Obama] that
the defense cuts imposed will result in the dire scenario you laid out before our
committee in February that ‘if ever the force is so degraded and so unready,
and then we’re asked to use it, it would be immoral,” said Sen. James Inhofe
(R-Okla.), the top Republican on the committee.

“When will the commander in chief be at the point of making
immoral decisions?” Inhofe later asked Dempsey and Vice Adm. James Winnefeld.

Dempsey stayed out of the long-running political fight
between Obama and Republicans over who’s to blame for sequestration.

“If the nation is threatened, we’ll go,” Dempsey said. “That’s
the point: We’ll go, and we may not be ready to go.”

The Pentagon’s $526.6 billion 2014 base budget request is
facing a $52 billion cut under sequestration. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel
sent a letter to the panel last week that laid out the damage the cuts would
cause, warning they would risk an unfit fighting force

But Inhofe criticized the letter Wednesday, saying it was
“woefully light on details.”

In his questions, Inhofe asks Dempsey whether the general had told
Obama about the danger of sequestration to the military.

“He knows this?” Inhofe asked.

“Yes sir,” Dempsey responded.

“Yet he continues with his approach,” Inhofe said.

To Democrats, it is Congress that needs to move to fix the
sequester, not the Obama administration. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl
Levin (D-Mich.) has said that he asked for the sequester report on 2014 in
order to help his colleagues understand the danger.

“Lastly — but far from least-ly — we must confront the
growing challenges of sequestration,” Levin said in his opening statement
Thursday.