The Senate budget plan announced Wednesday afternoon would fund the Department of Defense at the same level that President Obama requested, setting the stage for debates on how to fund wartime operations in the future.
The Senate Budget Committee would give the Pentagon $523 billion for fiscal 2016 – the sequester level — and adds $58 billion to the overseas contingency operations fund.
Obama had requested both amounts in his budget proposal. The $523 billion includes Defense Department and defense-related Energy Department spending.
But the Senate’s plan also includes several rules intended to slow spending add-ons and address what a Senate committee staffer described as Republican members’ growing reservations about using the overseas contingency operations account — which was meant to fund needs for only unforeseen war operations — as a catch-all account that Congress and the Pentagon tap to circumvent sequestration’s spending caps. The account is not subject to the caps.
In the House version, which was announced Tuesday, Budget Committee Republicans introduced a bill that significantly increases defense spending by adding $94 billion to the account. The bill was quickly criticized by both the defense hawks and conservatives as being out of line with party values and being an unrealistic way to fund the Pentagon’s multi-year procurement and construction needs.
The Senate plan creates the option to beef up defense spending by including a “deficit-neutral reserve fund,” which could be used to fund any defense needs on top of the budget request. The reserve fund, which was proposed by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, and Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., would operate by allowing lawmakers to fund defense needs as long as the legislation requesting the additional funds also identifies what source of revenues or offsets over the next 10 years would support the new spending.
The deficit-neutral fund would only be required to resource overseas contingency spending over the $58 billion already requested in the Senate’s fiscal year 2016 budget, a committee staff member confirmed.
Both military budget proposals, which are part of the overall budgets proposed by both chambers this week, are likely to face the threat of a veto from the White House as both reduce the nation’s long-term deficit through the repeal of Obamacare.
