The debate over the fiscal 2017 defense policy bill on Thursday will feature the classic clash between Democrats and Republicans on defense versus non-defense spending.
The Senate is expected to vote Thursday on moving forward with both an amendment from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to boost defense spending by $18 billion as well as a second-order amendment from Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., that would replace McCain’s plan with one to increase non-defense spending by an equal amount.
McCain has said that the $18 billion increase in the overseas contingency operations account would go to military priorities not funded by the president’s budget request, including about $1 billion for Army aircraft procurement, $2.5 billion for Navy and Marine Corps aircraft and $385 million for an additional littoral combat ship.
“Will you vote to give our military service members the resources, training and equipment they need and deserve? This vote will be that simple,” McCain said Wednesday during debate on the Senate floor.
McCain’s proposal is likely to enjoy support among Republicans. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., told reporters Wednesday at the Heritage Foundation that he would support the increase as a step toward a much-needed and even larger increase in future years.
“I think we should certainly increase spending up to what everyone understood the deal would be last year,” he said.
But Democrats have said they will not support the plan without a comparable increase among non-defense, domestic priorities. Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said before the Memorial Day break that there is “unanimous” consensus among Democrats that they will not support a defense increase without a non-defense boost as well.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Republicans are “pretending they’re balancing the budget when in reality they’re hiding all this money in a slush fund.”
“I’m so tired of the hypocrisy of the Republicans who say, ‘We’re all about being fiscally responsible and we’re not going to waive sequestration caps, but, by the way, we are,’ ” she told reporters at the Capitol this week.
Reed’s second-order amendment would replace McCain’s plan with one that adds $18 billion to the war chest, as well as an additional $18 billion to non-defense priorities throughout the federal government.
Justin Johnson, an analyst with the Heritage Foundation, said it’s “not out of the realm of possibility” that Reed will be able to get enough Republican support to advance his amendment, but that he expects it will fail.
However, he predicted the McCain proposal has a “decent shot” of passing if Democrats decide to let the higher funding level slide by in the authorization bill, knowing that they can fight it in the appropriations bill.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he is planning for the Senate to take up the fiscal 2017 defense appropriations bill next week.
The breakdown of how Reed would distribute the funding is:
- $3.5 billion for science and technology research at the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, NASA and Department of Energy
- $3.2 billion to rebuild infrastructure, including for the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Park System
- $2 billion for fixing cybersecurity vulnerabilities at non-defense agencies
- $1.9 billion for international affairs, including aid to Israel, Jordan and Lebanon, as well as embassy security
- $1.9 billion to rebuild water infrastructure, including a grant to stop lead contamination in Flint, Michigan
- $1.9 billion for Zika prevention and research
- $1.4 billion for security and law enforcement needs at the Department of Homeland Security, the Transportation Security Administration, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation
- $1.1 billion to help stop the heroin and opioid crisis
- $900 million for Food and Drug Administration food safety modernization
- $202 million for wildfire suppression
