"MacDill Air Force Base is toast if this goes through."
That chilling message came via South Carolina Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham at a town hall meeting in Tampa regarding major defense budget cuts that could happen by the end of year if Congress doesn't act before then.
Graham and fellow GOP Senators John McCain and Kelly Ayotte spoke at the CAMLS facility on Monday morning in the first of several stops over the next couple of days. They're trying to take their case to the public regarding what is known as sequestration, where $1.1 trillion of government spending, $500 billion of it in defense, is scheduled to automatically take place on January 1, 2013, unless Congress acts otherwise.
The reason that Congress created such a situation goes back to a year ago when what has become known as the "debt-ceiling debacle" took place. Congress wrote into law that if a so-called super committee of legislators from both sides of the aisle couldn't come up with a plan to reduce the deficit, such automatic cuts would happen at the end of this year.
But the GOP Senators don't want to wait until the lame-duck session after the election to work on this.
"Lame duck sessions are a disaster. They're a disaster," McCain repeated as he began the meeting.
This article appears in Jul 26 – Aug 1, 2012.