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Cheney to visit Capitol Hill to discuss defense cuts

Cheney to visit Capitol Hill to discuss defense cuts
CNN
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POSTED: Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - 5:00am

UPDATED: Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - 2:04pm

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is coming back to his old stomping grounds in the House of Representatives on Tuesday to highlight the impact that the automatic spending cuts to defense programs will have next year, according to two senior GOP leadership aides.

Cheney is scheduled to attend the weekly leadership meeting with House Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and other top elected leaders and then will meet with the full House GOP whip team led by Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-California, to discuss strategy for how to deal with the automatic cuts to defense programs that were included as part of the debt deal last summer.

Cheney served in the House and was elected the House Republican Whip in 1989 briefly, before he was tapped to serve as Secretary of Defense under President George H.W. Bush.

"The former Vice President and Secretary of Defense obviously has valuable perspective on the devastating impact of President Obama's defense sequester," one senior GOP leadership aide told CNN.

The majority of House Republicans voted for the debt deal that put in place a series of across-the-board spending cuts after a congressional super committee failed to reach a compromise on a comprehensive deficit reduction plan. Republicans have been working on a plan to replace the cuts to defense programs -- which account for half of the overall $110 billion in cuts.

The House GOP budget that passed earlier this year did away with the cuts just to the defense programs, but that budget failed to move ahead in the Democratic-led Senate. This week the House is scheduled to vote on a bill, called the "Sequestration Transparency Act," which requires the president to deliver a detailed plan to Congress showing which federal accounts will be subject to cuts. A similar measure already passed the Senate.

On Monday a top Senate Democrat, Patty Murray, said in a speech Democrats are willing to let the automatic cuts go into effect, and allow the Bush-era tax cuts to expire at the end of the year if the GOP continues to refuse to discuss any deficit cutting plan that includes new taxes.

"If Republicans won't work with us on a balanced approach, we are not going to get a deal," Murray said in a speech at the Brooking Institution.

Politico first reported on Cheney's visit to Capitol Hill.

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Comments News Comments

I'm sorry, but everyone in America now knows that if one is in debt, and has bills to pay, unnecessary spending is the first to go.

Take the F22 for example. The F 22 has not been used in a combat despite the initial introduction of this jet in 2005. The last of the 188 planes rolled off the assembly line in April of 2012. It has cost The United States more than $64 billion, more than double the initial expected cost.

This video sums it up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czoLH2KEQ6E

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