Murray’s budget plan would cut Pentagon spending by $240 billion over the next decade, a smaller reduction than the $500 billion mandated by sequestration. Military officials have warned that any new cuts could have a detrimental impact on national security.

While Murray proposes half the spending cuts of sequestration, Claude Chafin, communications director for the House Armed Services Committee, said her plan still “gets you to a hollow force.”

“The problem is once you hollow out the force, once you put the national defense strategy at risk, it’s at risk.,” Chafin said.  “It’s hollow. It doesn’t really matter how much you cut beyond that.”

Christopher Griffin, the executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative, said Murray’s cuts would be a dangerous gamble.

“We’re definitely playing the Defense Department limbo and the question is how low can you go before irreparable damage is done,” he said.

Murray’s proposal stands in stark contrast to House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R., Wis.) plan, approved by the budget committee last night, which eliminates defense sequestration cuts.

Ryan’s plan caps defense spending at a significantly lower level than he advocated during his vice presidential campaign, when he proposed raising defense spending to 4 percent of the gross domestic product. But defense hawks say this should to be viewed in context of the current sequestration crisis.

“At this point, an urgent problem that needs to be addressed is sequestration,” Griffin said. “When that’s addressed, any thoughtful study of the defense budget will realize that it’s not sufficient for our needs.”

Griffin said Ryan and Murray have “set out two posts” on defense spending, but the key issue will be which side Obama’s takes in own budget request.

“Will the president in his budget request set for the level of defense spending that his military leadership said is the absolute lowest that they can live with, or will he seek to go lower, as Murray did?” he said.

Murray’s plan is currently undergoing markup before it goes to a budget committee vote.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified last month that the Pentagon could not absorb any additional cuts and still continue to operate at its current level.

Defense officials have repeatedly warned that sequestration will gut the military and the defense industry.

The Pentagon has already started to feel the squeeze of sequestration, forcing it to suspend its Tuition Assistance program for military members, putting health benefits at risk, and disrupting programs for veterans.

A spokesperson for Murray said these concerns are addressed on page 72 of the budget proposal.

“As part of a balanced and fair plan to address the nation’s fiscal challenges that includes replacing sequestration, this budget makes responsible reductions to defense spending by slowing the rate of budget growth gradually and evenly to help defense leaders effectively manage the Department of Defense, while giving agencies a two-year period to prepare,” reads the budget.

SEN. MIKE CRAPO (R., IDAHO): In terms of the overall deficit reduction that is achieved, whether it’s through the taxes or the spending reductions that are claimed in the budget, what percentage of those is achieved in the first year?

JOHN RIGHTER: Uh–

CRAPO: In other words, you’re talking about a $1.85 trillion deficit reduction over ten, how much of that happens in year one?

RIGHTER: There are spending savings in year one, but in total, it’s about no.

CRAPO: It’s about what?

RIGHTER: It’s about zero in the first year, in total, because there’s spending savings and spending costs.

CRAPO: So I didn’t understand you, it’s zero in the first year?

RIGHTER: On net. On net, sir.

Republicans claim an accurate accounting of the budget proposal shows that it achieves all of its deficit reduction through tax hikes and in fact increases spending rather than cuts it.

Democrats say the budget resolution unveiled yesterday by Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.), who chairs the Budget Committee, trims the deficit by $1.85 trillion over ten years through spending cuts and tax hikes.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), the committee’s ranking member, claims that the measure’s proponents are misrepresenting both the spending and revenue sides of the equation.

On the spending side, the budget assumes in its baseline that cuts mandated by the sequester  that went into effect this month will be repealed, but fails to account for the resulting $1.1 trillion increase in federal outlays.

Murray’s budget actually contains a net spending increase after that is taken into account, even though Democrats claim the proposal will reduce spending by $975 billion over ten years.

Sessions sparred with John Righter, the committee’s deputy staff director, during a Thursday markup of the budget resolution over its treatment of sequester cuts. Sessions claimed that using the sequestration-free baseline amounts to “double-counting.”

Righter defended the budget’s assumptions, saying it is “likely that [the sequester law] will be changed,” but Sessions said that amounted to substituting political analysis for economic analysis.

“You’re taking the political view as somehow this is going to be turned off and there’s going to be changes and therefore you don’t have to account for the increased spending of $1.1 trillion,” Sessions said.

Righter insisted that Murray’s budget uses a similar baseline to the proposal offered by House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.).

However, Ryan made a point of excluding from his budget supposed savings on previously planned troop drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan, interest payments on debt made unnecessary by sequester cuts, and reductions in disaster relief spending authorized in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

Ryan has said his proposal cuts spending by $4.6 trillion over ten years. If he had included savings from troop withdrawals and reduced spending on disaster relief and interest payments, he could claim $5.7 trillion in spending cuts.

Ryan has previously criticized such budgetary gimmicks as “moon yogurt accounting.”

Murray included Overseas Contingency Operation (OCO) spending in her budget’s baseline then eliminated that spending, allowing Democrats to claim an additional $240 billion in savings for operations that are already scheduled to be drawn down.

She also included spending on Sandy relief in the baseline, even though that spending will not be a part of the federal budget in future years. The Murray budget then counts a reduction in Sandy-related outlays towards its overall reduction in spending.

Gordon Gray, the director of fiscal policy at the American Action Forum and a former Senate Budget Committee staffer, said Murray is attempting to “muddy how her policies will ultimately affect spending.”

Taking into account policies that specify a reduction in OCO and disaster relief spending, Gray explained, “her policy adjustment is a net wash” because it “saves” money that was not realistically going to be spent in the first place.

After subtracting “phony war savings and inflated disaster spending,” Budget Committee Republicans say, “the Democrat budget increases spending $645 billion above projected spending levels.”

It also hikes taxes by hundreds of billions more than Murray and other Democrats claim, Republicans say.

Murray claims $975 billion in “new revenues,” but Republicans say the actual budget document released by the committee contains more than $1.5 trillion in tax hikes.

“They are actually hiding an additional $500 billion in tax proposals buried in their 113 page budget document,” one Republican Budget Committee staffer said.

Eli Zupnick, a spokesman for Budget Committee Democrats, said Republicans’ calculations on this point were “false.” Zupnick said, the budget calls for “$975 billion in new revenue” and “not a penny more.”

Senate Republicans seized on the $1.5 trillion figure.

“Any senator who votes for that budget is voting for a $1.5 trillion tax hike, the largest in the history of our country,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in a Thursday speech on the Senate floor.

“The Senate Democrat budget is more than just disappointing: It’s extreme,” McConnell added. “It’s really one of the most extreme, most left-wing budgets of the modern era.”

The budget is expected to expose divides in the Democratic caucus. Senate Democrats’ electoral arm has signaled that Murray’s budget could be a liability for the party’s vulnerable senators, though one red state Democrat up for reelection in 2014, Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, has already signaled that she will support the measure.

One of Murray’s proposed tax hikes is an effort to reduce the adverse budgetary impact of sequester repeal, which is factored into Murray’s baseline.

The budget assumes a repeal of sequester cuts but proposes an additional $480 billion in taxes to make up for some of the measure’s deficit reduction. The budget also calls for $100 billion in new taxes to pay for additional stimulus spending.

Taken with the advertised $923 billion increase in revenues, the result is $1.503 trillion in total new tax hikes. Because the budget does not actually reduce spending below current law, all of its deficit reduction appears to come on the revenue side.

Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.) is slated to release her party’s budget resolution at a committee meeting Wednesday afternoon.

However, committee Republicans have yet to see any details on how the proposal will reduce the federal budget deficit by $1.85 trillion, Murray’s stated benchmark.

Murray has instead circulated “talking points” that generally outline the proposal, but include few specifics.

A Republican aide on the Senate Budget Committee said Murray’s coyness “shows a terrible lack of confidence in their agenda and exposes a lack of commitment to the transparency our president promised when campaigning in 2008.”

Murray’s budget is expected to expose deep divides among Senate Democrats, who have not passed a budget in over three years.

Guy Cecil, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, recently said he would not advise vulnerable Senate Democrats to vote for Murray’s budget, signaling that support for the measure could be a liability for red state Democrats.

A spokesman for Sen. Max Baucus (D., Mont.), who is up for reelection next year, publicly criticized Murray’s proposal on Tuesday, saying it “would kill the possibility” of enacting meaningful tax reform.

Murray’s office did not return a request for comment.

The budget proposal is expected to include about $1 trillion in tax hikes and $975 billion in spending cuts.

Republicans will likely insist that many of those cuts are illusory.

The talking points released by Murray’s office and obtained by the Free Beacon on Wednesday include deficit reduction measures that have previously been criticized as dishonest.

One bullet point says the measure will save $240 billion “by carefully and responsibly cutting defense spending to align with the drawdown of troops in our overseas operations.”

Budget committee Republicans described similar proposals to take credit for savings achieved through previously planned troop withdrawals as “a budget gimmick since it claims savings from money that would never be spent in the first place.”

Ultimately, Murray judged that a budget was worth doing — a choice other Democratic leaders supported her on. So when House Republicans decided last week to try to force the Senate to pass a spending blueprint for the first time in three years, Democrats were ready to say yes. And on Wednesday, Murray made it official, announcing she would seek to devise a budget and saying the committee is “ready to get to work.”

According to its website, the Senate Budget Committee is “responsible for drafting Congress’ annual budget plan and monitoring action on the budget for the Federal Government.”

Gretchen Hamel, executive director of the nonpartisan fiscal watchdog group Public Notice, slammed Murray in a statement to the Washington Free Beacon, criticizing her seeming lack of urgency in carrying out the committee’s primary responsibility.

“It’s stunning that the individual most responsible for passing a budget in the Senate is apparently unclear of why that job is important,” Hamel said. “It shouldn’t take three seconds, let alone three weeks, to understand that continuing to spend unchecked isn’t how any government should operate.”

Committee staffers appear to be looking forward to a new face at the helm despite Sen. Murray’s equivocation in deciding whether or not to pass a budget.

Roll Call quotes an anonymous Democratic aide saying that the previous budget chairman, North Dakota Democrat Sen. Kent Conrad “sucked at managing bills.”

It is unclear what work the Committee is actually performing during the more than 1,300 days since the Senate passed its most recent budget,

Meanwhile, the federal deficit has topped $1 trillion for the fourth straight year, increasing the federal debt by $5.3 trillion.

“We can’t sit here and negotiate with ourselves,” House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) told reporters on Capitol Hill. “If the president doesn’t agree with our proposal and our outlines, I think he’s got an obligation to send one to Congress.”

Republican leaders were taken aback this week when the White House swiftly rejected a GOP offer based on a proposal outlined by Erskine Bowles, the Democratic co-chair of the president’s 2010 deficit commission.

The proposed framework included $800 billion in new revenue through tax reform—eliminating or capping deduction for wealthy earners—and was criticized by conservative lawmakers and pundits as too generous.

“What we put forward was by our estimates a very fair proposal, and by some conservative estimates was too fair,” said one House leadership aide. “We’re not excited about the revenue, but we know that we’re not getting everything we want. There’s no rational reason for Obama to reject it.”

Boehner issued a statement slamming Obama for “shifting the goal posts” by rejecting the “balanced approach” to deficit reduction he claims to want.

The House leadership aide said a deal to avert the fiscal cliff would be “fairly easy to do” if the president would stop changing his position “every 8 hours or so.”

“He is all over the map,” the aide said. “If we were negotiating with the Obama of six weeks ago, or six days ago, we might be able to get something done.”

Republican leaders scoffed last week at an opening proposal from the White House largely based on the president’s most recent budget, which was unanimously rejected by Democrats in both chambers of Congress.

“If you look at the plans that the White House has talked about thus far, they couldn’t pass either house of the Congress,” Boehner said Wednesday.

When Republicans attempted to bring the White House plan up for a vote in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) objected. 

“If the president’s proposal was made in good faith, Democrats should be eager to vote for it,” the Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said. “So I’m surprised the majority leader just declined the chance for them to support it with their votes.” 

Meanwhile, negotiations appear to have stalled.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) said, “nothing is going on” in terms of meetings with the White House because the president is unwilling to have “specific discussions” about cutting spending.

He later announced that the House would not formally adjourn “until a credible solution to the fiscal cliff has been found.”

The next 72 hours are “critical,” said House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) and provide “an opportunity for the president to lead.”

Boehner told reporters he would be “available at any moment to sit down with the president.”

He also dismissed the idea that Republicans were out of line with public opinion by refusing to raise tax rates on high earners.

“The revenues we’re putting on the table are going to come from—guess who? The rich,” Boehner said.

Obama has insisted that no deal is possible unless Republicans agree to raise revenue through higher tax rates.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the administration was “absolutely” willing to go over the fiscal cliff if Republicans refuse to cave on this issue.

“There’s no prospect in an agreement that doesn’t involve the rates going up on the top 2 percent of the wealthiest,” he said.

Other leading Democrats, such as Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.), also suggested that raising tax rates on all Americans is preferable to keeping current rates in place for the wealthy.

GOP denounced such rhetoric as counterproductive.

“An obsession to raise taxes is not going to solve the problem,” Cantor said. “We can’t just keep borrowing money and raising taxes and expect the problem to go away.”

Aides dismissed rumors of a so-called GOP “doomsday plan,” whereby House Republicans would vote “present” on a bill to extend current tax rates on families earning less than $250,000 a year. It would essentially give Obama what he wants, but some argue that doing so would diminish his political leverage in future negotiations.

“I don’t understand where that’s coming from, we’re not planning for it at all,” one aide said. “That’s a gimmick. We’re working toward an actual solution.”

However, the aide acknowledged “things could change” as a deadline for a deal approaches, but added: “If [Obama] is waiting for us to cave [on tax rates] he’s going to be waiting for a long, long time.”

PETER WELCH: This is not a debt ceiling situation where we’re literally going to default on our debt. We have got this fiscal cliff date, but it is really more of a slope. So I am confident that the president is hanging in there because it makes sense for him to do and I think he’s really convinced the American people support him and it is good for the economy.

BROOKE BALDWIN: Okay. Congressman Peter Welch, thank you so much for joining me from the Hill. We’ll see 28 days to go whether in fact we go over the slope or not.

Economic experts have warned if the fiscal cliff is not averted, the United States could enter into another economic recession, as the Washington Free Beacon reported earlier this year.

Welch’s colleague Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.) reiterated her threat to go over the cliff Tuesday if high earners do not see higher tax rates in a meeting with progressives, according to the Huffington Post.

Full interview: