WASHINGTON–U.S. Senator John Boozman (R-AR) released the following statement in opposition to the budget agreement expected to pass the Senate later today: 

“I appreciate the efforts of both sides to find common ground and avoid another shutdown. However, I cannot support a measure that immediately increases spending and ultimately busts the budget caps that were put place to get us on the path to fiscal responsibility.

Sequestration, while not the ideal way to address spending, has actually worked. As a result, we have been able to reduce discretionary spending for two straight years for the first time since the end of World War II. While we should look for a better method to achieve savings than across-the-board cuts, this agreement falls short of achieving significant savings. 

One way the budget agreement finds savings comes at the expense of every retired serviceman and woman. The agreement reduces the cost-of-living-adjustments (COLAs) for retired servicemembers under the age of 62. There are better ways to find savings than reducing the retirement compensation of individual military retirees by as much as $72,000. It’s simply not appropriate to ask our military retirees for more sacrifice while we continue to ignore our real spending problem. 

While I appreciate the effort to restore regular order to the budget process, we have to get serious about our spending problem. I hope that we can do that during the appropriations process in the coming year. We can’t keep kicking the can down the road and continue the ‘spend now in return for promises later’ mentality.”