Rescheduled: Budget Battles

Congress-watchers are raising the odds of yet another government shutdown next month. Behind the high-profile fight over Planned Parenthood looms profound disagreement over Pentagon spending.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Four years ago, Washington conventional wisdom said there would be no sequester, because neither Republicans nor Democrats would risk the political backlash of imposing across-the-board cuts on the Pentagon. But conventional wisdom was wrong. the Pentagon faced the steepest one-year cut to its budget since the end of the Korean War. And despite heightened security concerns, and bipartisan protests at the "meataxe" nature of the cuts, sequestration continues with no end in sight.

How did this happen? Join New America to explore the inside story of how a quiet transpartisan initiative joining Tea Party Republicans and liberal Democrats altered the trajectory of defense spending and sparked intra-party fights that are still playing out. What can the story of this alliance tell us about the weeks ahead?

The event will be the second in a series of New Models of Policy Change case studies that will examine the successes and limits of transpartisanship. What can we learn from the transpartisan effort to reform the Pentagon budget? What does it tell us about likely longer-term outcomes? Will this alliance replicate itself on other fiscal or national security issues?

Breakfast will be served and copies of the case study will be available.

Follow the discussion online using #StrangeBedfellows and following @NewAmerica and @Polyarchy.

Participants:

John Bennett
Editor, CQ Budget Tracker

Grover Norquist
President, Americans for Tax Reform

Darcy Scott Martin
Director, Pentagon Budget Campaign

Heather Hurlburt
Director, New Models of Policy Change, New America