WASHINGTON — House Republicans are proposing a short-term budget that would ease the impact of sequestration on defense, veterans, immigration and law enforcement, while allowing the sequester’s blunt cuts to hit elsewhere.

The military would not be protected from all sequestration’s effects, but the new legislation would update the spending plans for the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs, giving priority to programs that are more important today than they were a year ago and thereby, presumably, doing less damage to national security.

The GOP proposal would also boost the budget for areas of the military not affected by the sequester and give the defense secretary greater leeway to shuffle funds among different programs. The military’s operation-and-maintenance fund would increase by $10.4 billion above last year’s level, for instance, while some lower-priority programs would be cut.

The bill contains additional funding as well to allow Customs and Border Protection and the FBI to avoid layoffs, and it requires Immigration and Customs Enforcement to maintain 34,000 detention beds for those suspected of being undocumented immigrants.

The burden of the sequester would not be eased on any other federal program — not anti-poverty efforts, education funding, Medicare and more.

Click here for the full story.