There was a time when a cry of “national security!” set Republican appropriators buzzing, writing blank checks for surveillance, new agencies and wars that eventually went on the nation’s credit card.
Those days are apparently over. This morning, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ventured down to Capitol Hill to meet with House Speaker John Boehner and to implore him not to slash her department’s budget in the ways described in the GOP’s budget proposal. No less than the nation’s security is at stake, she told reporters after the meeting.
“The scope of the proposed House cuts is massive,” she said. “”The truth is that cuts of that level will be detrimental to America’s national security.”
Asked about Clinton’s comments at his own press conference later in the day, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was unmoved.
“My position as far as that funding is concerned, we asked the appropriators to go out and identify cuts that we could withstand, to bring spending back to ’08 levels without jeopardizing our national security,” he told reporters.
The Washington Post‘s Felicia Sonmez nicely lays out Clinton’s concerns over the Republican budget proposal:
Noting that the funding resolution proposed by House Republicans last week would cut State and USAID funding by 16 percent compared to FY 2010 levels, Clinton said she told Boehner that she was “very clear” about her “deep concerns” about the cuts and what they would mean for the work being done by both departments, particularly regarding the U.S. mission in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Clinton told reporters gathered in a hall just off the Capitol Rotunda that the U.S. diplomatic corps would be “forced to scale back significantly our mission in the front line states of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan” should the GOP proposals go through.
Cantor said that he doesn’t expect Clinton to be the last cabinet officials to express concerns about the GOP budget.
“Honestly there are going to be a lot of constituencies, a lot of secretaries and agencies that don’t agree with the priorities outlined in the Republican CR proposal,” he said today. “But that’s why we’ve said the House can work its will.”
