Sequester will be bad news for New Mexico

WASHINGTON — They don’t like it, but at least for now, there is nothing New Mexico’s congressional delegation can do to stave off a federal budget sequestration that could cost the state’s economy billions in federal dollars.

Rep. Steve Pearce, the delegation’s lone Republican, placed blame for the now-enacted $85 billion package of budget cuts squarely on President Barack Obama. Delegation Democrats said Republican resistance to more tax hikes had squandered any deal.

Pearce, who voted against the sequester trigger in 2011 saying it didn’t go far enough, this week conceded that looming cuts would “not necessarily be good news for New Mexico.”

“The president is being downright irresponsible,” Pearce said, lamenting military cuts especially. “It’s really dumb to use our military men and women as the fulcrum point.”

Pearce said sequestration itself isn’t the problem, it’s where the cuts are targeted.

“The problem is that it is clustered at Defense and Homeland Security and that’s where New Mexico is,” Pearce said.

Senators Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich, who both voted for legislation authorizing the sequester in 2011, supported a Democratic bill this week that would offset the sequester through smaller spending cuts, divided equally between defense and non-defense programs and spread out over a longer period of time.

Their proposal would also impose a tax on the rich under the Buffett Rule, close an oil industry tax loophole and deny deductions to companies that ship jobs overseas.

Heinrich said the bill “would have averted thousands of layoffs, funded vital services for children, seniors, military families, and it avoided crippling our economy.”

Udall and Heinrich have both said their vote in support of the sequester legislation in 2011 stemmed from fears of failing to raise the nation’s debt limit.

Udall said the sequestration’s impact in New Mexico, if not averted, will be gradual but significant.

“It’s not like falling off a fiscal cliff,” Udall said. “It’s more like tumbling down a hill, but this is going to have a large statewide impact.”

Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a freshman Democrat, said those supporting the sequester aren’t considering the impact on federal spending in New Mexico.

“If there is one state that can’t afford it, it is New Mexico,” Lujan Grisham said. “I don’t think people understand what it does to the military installations.”

Lujan Grisham, a member of the House Budget Committee, said she expects the panel to hold committee hearings on possible sequester solutions early next week. Lujan Grisham was not in Congress when both chambers approved the sequester legislation in 2011 and the president signed it.

“No one really thought this would happen, but it is,” Lujan Grisham said.

In a statement, Rep. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., said uncertainty surrounding sequestration is already resulting in job losses in northern New Mexico. He also emphasized his vote against the budget mechanism.

“From the very beginning and every step of the way, I opposed to the failed experiment that is sequestration,” Luján said. “This was a manufactured crisis that was never intended to take place.”

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