Kyl and the supercommittee met for the first time on Thursday. More defense cuts? Kyl's out

It has only met once, but Sen. Jon Kyl is already threatening to quit the deficit busting supercommittee if the panel pushes more defense cuts.

“I’m off the committee” if there are deeper cuts to the military, Kyl warned at a forum sponsored by several conservative think tanks, including AEI, the Foreign Policy Initiative and the Heritage Foundation.


The supercommittee met for the first time Thursday but made little progress other than giving opening statements and passing its own internal rules.

Kyl, an Arizona Republican, who is speaking for many defense hawks in trying to stave off deep cuts to national security, told the forum Thursday that “my point of view is that defense should not have any more cuts.”

Kyl and others are also deeply worried about the so-called trigger in the debt-limit law passed last month. If the supercommittee fails to reach between $1.2 trillion and $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, there will be automatic cuts in defense spending and Medicare.

The trigger was built into the debt-limit deal in order to force serious action from the supercommittee, but Kyl and others are already promising to rewrite the law to water down the trigger if the deficit panel fails to reach a deal by Thanksgiving.

If the “trigger” is pulled, “I would do my best to see to it that it never took effect,” Kyl said.

Correction: An earlier version of this story had the incorrect name of the Foreign Policy Initiative.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: Zack Hale @ 09/08/2011 04:27 PM Correction: An earlier version of this story had the incorrect name of the Foreign Policy Initiative.