Bill would ease Pentagon budget cuts

WASHINGTON, May 1 (UPI) -- The House Budget Committee introduced a bill aimed a sparing U.S. defense spending from mandatory cuts next year, Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Tuesday.

Ryan introduced legislation eliminating the so-called sequester provision in the Budget Control Act that would have required the Pentagon to chop expenditures by $600 billion over 10 years.

House aides told The Hill the measure could come up for a vote before the Memorial Day congressional recess.

The reductions were part of a deal that raised the national debt ceiling last summer. The sequestration was supposed to have been an incentive for a congressional supercommittee to find alternative ways to cut the budget. The panel was unable to come up with a plan to do so.

Both parties agreed that the hefty defense cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act were deep enough to have an effect on national security, although some Democrats have objected to giving the Pentagon a pass while leaving social programs vulnerable to severe reductions, the newspaper said.