Lankford Supports Bipartisan Budget Plan

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 12, 2013

Lankford Supports Bipartisan Budget Plan

Protects Defense from Further Cuts, Shores up Federal Pension Program

Washington, DC—House Republican Policy Committee Chairman James Lankford (R-OK) joined his colleagues in the House to vote in favor of the bipartisan budget plan produced from the Budget Conference Committee in advance of the December 13th deadline.

“Under current law the Department of Defense is scheduled to bear the burden of all discretionary spending cuts in Fiscal Year 2014,” said Lankford.

“The President’s sequester was designed to hit defense hard for the third time in four years. This agreement gives us an opportunity to replace the short-term defense cuts with real, long-term spending reductions to mandatory programs, which is what the Super Committee was charged with accomplishing two years ago. This will continue real deficit reduction and protect our national defense from the across-the-board cuts advocated by this Administration. In fact, even with slightly increased spending in 2014, which is offset by other mandatory spending reductions, the 2014 budget is still lower than the 2011 and 2012 House Republican-passed budget.

“This bill is not a ‘grand bargain’ to address all of Washington’s bad spending habits. There is still a tremendous amount of fraud and waste in our federal spending. Unfortunately, divided government reduces our ability to achieve the level of spending efficiency House Republicans have repeatedly called for. However, the bill’s spending reductions and reforms take us another small step closer to fixing the harmful policies that led to trillion-dollar deficits and our $17 trillion in national debt. The 2011 budget agreement, spending caps and deficit reduction will remain in place, despite Senate demands for more taxes and higher spending.”

House Republicans fought to bring federal deficit spending down from $1.4 trillion in FY2011 to $680 billion FY2013. In August 2011, when Congress passed the Budget Control Act (BCA) to institute long-term fiscal reforms for deficit reduction, the bill began a 10-year process to make the largest cuts to federal spending in many years. That 10-year agreement remains in place with the passage of this budget.

“Pension reform is a significant issue in Oklahoma and the federal government. This bill also reforms our federal retirement system and brings it more into balance with retirement programs in the private sector,” observed Lankford.

The bill does not change retirement or pension plans for current federal employees. This change would only take effect for new hires or those employees who have not yet reached five years of service by the end of 2013.

“As we face the looming February debt limit deadline and beyond, we must continue to focus on long-term reforms to get us back on a path of fiscal certainty. As I have in the past, I will support proposals that make progress on our deficit reduction and vote against proposals that maintain the status quo,” concluded Lankford.

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