Washington, D.C.—Today, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, released the following statement on the Department of Defense furloughs set to begin this week.
“While Republicans work on their debt limit ransom note, hundreds of thousands of Department of Defense workers are scheduled to begin furloughs because Republicans refuse to join Democrats in a budget conference and work with us to replace all of sequestration in a responsible and fair way. The people I talk to in Washington state and the vast majority of families across the country agree that sequestration is a terrible way to cut spending, and there is no reason for Republicans to try to push us to the next manufactured crisis before we get to work on a balanced replacement.”
The Senate Budget that Senator Murray wrote would replace all of sequestration with an equal mix of responsible spending cuts and new revenue raised by closing tax loopholes that benefit the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations. Murray has also worked to write sequestration replacement bills that would prevent these furloughs along with the rest of the automatic cuts, but they have been filibustered by Senate Republicans.
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