McCain and Graham spell out how they’ll get around the “supercommittee”

Two top Senate GOP defense hawks laid out for The Cable how they plan to save the defense budget — if the congressional "supercommittee" fails to reach an agreement, triggering $600 billion in defense cuts over ten years.

Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) are part of a larger effort to protect the defense budget from the "sequestration" mechanism, which would automatically be activated if the supercommittee fails to agree by Thanksgiving on $1.2 trillion of discretionary spending cuts over 10 years. They sent a letter last week to the Pentagon asking for a detailed analysis of the consequences for the military if the trigger is pulled.

"The secretary of defense and all the service chiefs say that it would do irreparable damage to our national security, so obviously we need to do something about it," McCain told The Cable on Tuesday. "My intent is that sequestration on national defense will not take place."

McCain said he would introduce and support a law to undo the Budget Control Act of 2011, which codified the deal to raise the debt ceiling.

"We’ll do everything we can to prevent [the trigger] being implemented," McCain said. "You can’t bind future Congresses."

The threat of large defense cuts, along with a parallel trigger that would cut entitlements, was intended to be so objectionable that the supercommittee would have an incentive to make a deal. When asked, McCain rejected the idea that by undermining the trigger, he and Graham are taking pressure off the supercommittee to make the required bipartisan cuts.

"There is sufficient pressure on the supercommittee, they will not be swayed either way by our concern about sequestration of national defense," McCain said.

Graham went into more detail about what hawks will seek as a replacement for the defense trigger.

"I hope the supercommittee can do its job, but we can’t just live on hope around here. So if they fail, what do we do?" Graham said. "If the committee fails, I am not going to allow the triggers to be pulled that would shoot the Defense Department in the head."

Graham said he would put forth a substitute to the triggers, "something where the whole country shares in the failure of the supercommittee, not just the Defense Department and Medicare providers."

A scrum of reporters cornered supercommittee member Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) coming out of the Tuesday Democratic caucus lunch, and your humble Cable guy elbowed his way to the front of the pack. We decided to first ask several questions about the IAEA report on Iran, to the chagrin of the other reporters desperate for supercommittee quotes.

When Kerry did turn to answering questions about the supercommittee, he said, "We’ve got some distance to travel and we’re working very hard to do that."

Kerry said he was not "optimistic," but he was "hopeful," the super ommittee would succeed.

"Everybody’s working in … uh … good faith," he said, with a wry grin on his face.