In late December, Congress wrote a big IOU to the Pentagon, authorizing an additional $25 billion over the bare-bones defense budget proposed by the Biden administration for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.
But so far, the Pentagon has yet to see a penny of the extra funds.
At the time, the passage of the $768.2 billion 2022 National Defense Authorization Act was hailed by Democrats and Republicans alike as an example of how bipartisanship reigns supreme when it comes to national security.
The authorization legislation, known as the NDAA, sets policy and essentially gives the Pentagon permission to spend the money once it’s been allocated by Congress.
But the funds themselves are not available until the passage of a separate appropriations bill, which is tangled in partisan bickering.
“You know, we are in the most partisan state that I can recall. Everything is about partisan. But our budget is where we come together, Democrats and Republicans,” said Democratic Rep. Brenda Lawrence of Michigan, vice chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee, on CNN. “We’re making sausage. It’s painful to live through.”
So for the third time, Congress this month was forced to pass a continuing resolution, or CR, an emergency funding measure to avoid a government shutdown and buy a few more weeks for negotiations.
The latest CR expires on March 11, and there is growing concern it could be extended for the entire year, which would effectively negate many of the hard-fought provisions of the NDAA, including money to counter China and invest in hypersonics, artificial intelligence, and other transformational technology critical to building a force equipped to fight future wars.
The problem with a CR is that it allows the Pentagon to spend only what it spent last year and only on the same things it funded last year.
“We can’t start new programs, can’t build new ships. We’re going to have to delay perhaps as much as 100 military construction projects,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said. “In order to pay for the 2.7% pay increase that we want to give our troops, much deserved, by the way, that money is going to have to come from other accounts, and that could eat into operational readiness as well.”
The two things on which Democrats and Republicans seem to agree are that extending the spending caps of the CR until September would be a national security disaster and that the impasse is the other party’s fault amid its implacable resistance to a reasonable compromise.
“Typically, as appropriators, we’re able to negotiate in good faith to reach a bipartisan deal,” ranking Republican Rep. Ken Calvert of California said at a January appropriations subcommittee hearing. “Unfortunately, my friends on the other side of the aisle have decided they’re more committed to the progressive wing of their party than to the responsible governance of this country.”
“The Democratic proposals are out there. To date, there has not been one single document that outlines where our Republican colleagues want to go,” Connecticut Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro countered. “The longer our colleagues get comfortable in their inaction, the greater the long-range risks will be for our nation.”
The failure to pass a budget on time has become an embarrassing annual reminder of an increasingly dysfunctional Congress, unable to perform the most basic function of government.
For 19 of the last 20 years, the Pentagon has had to begin its budget year under a continuing resolution.
“People in this town, from the administration, really to DOD, to the Congress, seem to sort of view this as an inconvenience and a little bit of a lapse,” mused Mississippi Republican Sen. Roger Wicker during the confirmation hearing for the new head of the U.S. Central Command earlier this month. “We’re now spending money for the Pentagon [at a level] that was decided more than a year ago and because of our failure to have a defense appropriation bill.”
Over the years, the Pentagon has accepted that new appropriations can’t be counted on in the first half of the fiscal year and has adjusted by pushing major contracts and new initiatives into the third and fourth quarters.
“Operating under CR has become the norm, and the Navy and Marine Corps sadly has become accustomed to prepare our program to limit that impact,” said Rear Adm. John Gumbleton, the Navy’s deputy assistant secretary for budget, who told reporters last month that a yearlong CR would inevitably create “a smaller, less ready, and less capable, less lethal force.”
Making things worse this year is record-high inflation, which could soon reach 10% by some estimates.
That means that by the time the Pentagon gets its extra money, it won’t be worth nearly as much.
“While Congress continues to punt their responsibilities, the Defense Department has lost $30 billion in purchasing power since October 1, 2021,” argued retired Maj. Gen. Arnold Punaro, a former Senate Armed Services Committee staff director and current board chairman for the National Defense Industrial Association.
“This is particularly harmful to the defense industrial base, especially the thousands of small businesses that provide the backbone of the supply chain for the high technologies essential to countering our peer adversaries,” Punaro said in an email to the Washington Examiner.
When Congress failed again to reach a budget deal this month, a frustrated Rep. Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican, called on his colleagues to skip their scheduled two-week recess and roll up their sleeves.
“This is crazy. Continuing resolutions are a disaster, particularly for our military,” Gallagher said in a statement. “If negotiators still can’t reach an agreement five months after their deadline, we need to cancel recess, lock ourselves in a room, and get to work until we’ve come to an agreement.”
That, of course, didn’t happen.
If Democrats and Republicans can’t get their act together by March 11, the U.S. military risks going a full year, in the words of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, “forced to spend money on things we don’t need and stop spending money on investments we desperately do.”
Jamie McIntyre is the Washington Examiner’s senior writer on defense and national security. His morning newsletter, “Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense,” is free and available by email subscription at dailyondefense.com.
