By Kerry Young, CQ Staff

Lawmakers in both parties are increasing the pressure on the Obama administration to spell out how federal agencies would implement automatic, across-the-board spending cuts at the start of next year. But the deeply partisan divide on economic issues suggests there’s little chance that Congress will act to head off the sequester.

The push for more information comes amid a growing outcry from Congress and from groups that would be affected by the impact of the $109 billion in spending cuts. The alarms have spread from the defense world to advocates of domestic programs, who warn that public safety, law enforcement, education and other areas would be affected by the blunt and sudden cutbacks scheduled to hit on Jan. 2.

The Obama administration has so far instructed agencies to prepare budget requests for fiscal 2013 as if the sequester would be averted, and lawmakers for months made do largely with general observations of its potential impact.

But the House on July 18 will vote on a bill that demands from the White House a detailed description of the plans for implementing the spending cuts at federal agencies, in both domestic and defense programs. That follows the adoption of a measure in the Senate calling for even more detailed reports from agencies, reports that would include assessments of the impact of the cuts in areas such as food inspections and social welfare programs.

“Congress does not yet have an accurate understanding of the implications of sequester beyond an assertion that the cuts would be devastating, which is the word used by the Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, and nearly every other defense official we have queried,” John McCain of Arizona, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said July 12. “We must have this information as we begin the work of developing a balanced approach to deficit reduction.”

House defense authorizers have scheduled an Aug. 1 hearing with two senior Obama administration officials to discuss the estimated $54 billion in cuts the Pentagon faces under sequester.

Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., last week released an assessment from the Department of Health and Human Services showing how education and medical research would be curtailed under the sequester. Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Financial Resources Ellen G. Murray, citing a Congressional Budget Office estimate, said non-defense discretionary programs faced a 7.8 percent reduction that, she said in a letter to Markey, would have “profound consequences” on medical research and treatment for patients with AIDS and with substance-abuse problems.

GOP Seeks ‘Common-Sense Savings’

Republican congressional leaders wrote to President Obama on July 13, calling on him to seek “common-sense savings” to replace the sequester. The reductions under the sequester would be replaced by those savings on spending and would not include “tax increase proposals that face bipartisan congressional opposition,” said the letter from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia.

There’s virtually universal agreement in Congress that lawmakers must revise the sequester, but there’s no agreement between Republicans and Democrats on how to do that. That’s why there’s broad agreement that Congress will not act to head off the sequester, a kind of budget doomsday device built into the 2011 debt-limit law (PL 112-25), until after the November elections.

“Both sides agree that sequestration is a terrible way to cut spending, on both the defense and non-defense sides,” said Patty Murray of Washington, the No. 4 Senate Democrat, who will speak Monday at the Brookings Institution about the budget cuts.

There has been bipartisan cooperation on attempts to compel the Office of Management and Budget to release detailed information on how the cuts under the sequester would be distributed across agencies and programs, but it’s unclear whether Congress will soon clear a law carrying such a demand.

McCain worked with Murray to add a requirement for a sequester report to the Senate’s farm bill (S 3240), and the chamber in June adopted by voice vote their amendment seeking a sequester report. But Boehner last week said he had not yet decided when the House’s version of the farm bill (HR 6083) would come to the floor, raising the possibility that it may not come to the floor at all.