House GOP Presses Reid to Avoid Massive Defense Cuts
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Alex Wong/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — With the House voting to extend the current tax rates this week, House Republican Leaders sent a letter today to Senate Majority Leader Reid that commits to calling the House back into session during the five-week recess if Senate Democrats choose to act on a replacement of the Defense sequester or an extension of tax cuts for the wealthiest taxpayers.
“If the Senate passes its own package of alternative cuts and reforms to replace the defense sequester, it is our commitment that the House will reconvene to either consider it or to go to conference to produce a consensus package that can be sent to the president for his signature,” the GOP quartet – Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, and Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling – writes in the letter. “However, in order to avert the threat to our nation’s security that is posed by the defense sequester, the Senate must act. A Senate vote to simply postpone the sequester, rather than replace it with common-sense cuts and reforms, is unworkable and unacceptable.”
According to prepared excerpts from Boehner’s remarks to the GOP Conference this morning, the house speaker will tell his rank and file members that the GOP is putting the onus on the Senate to act.
“We’re putting this right at your doorstep. You own it,” he’ll say of the Democrats. “If Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama want to own a small business tax hike and a devastating cut to our national defense, they are now set up perfectly to do so.”
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