The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee defended his committee’s version of the defense policy bill Thursday by invoking three former senators who have used a similar controversial funding technique: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Kerry.
The fiscal 2009 National Defense Authorization Act was signed knowing that the overseas contingency operations budget would be underfunded, Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, pointed out. The $612.5 billion budget offered $542.5 billion for the base budget and only $70 billion for the war chest, underfunding operations in Iraq and Afghanistan while avoiding a Department of Defense budget crisis.
This year, Congress faces the same issue of either fully funding base requirements or fully funding the overseas contingency operations account.
The House is pursuing a fully funded base budget, giving $543.4 billion in base funding and $35.7 billion in the war chest. It means that overseas funding will run out by April, forcing the next president and Congress to extend the funding for the rest of the year.
While shuffling money between different defense accounts may get by this year, Thornberry, speaking at a Heritage Foundation event Thursday morning, said he has a better solution: “We’re gonna have to do better than spend 15 percent of the national budget on defense.”
Thornberry is concerned with the political argument that every defense dollar must be accompanied by a non-defense dollar, usually used for social spending, before raising the defense topline. “I worry about having something other than national security drive the train when it comes to our military,” he said.
However, short of spending more of the overall government budget on defense, only funding part of the overseas account, he said, will give the next administration time to develop a strategy and request more warfighting money as needed.
Thornberry is hopeful the policy bill will become law before the general election, but was uncertain given the political climate.
