The Marine Corps would be forced to halt all its flights by July if Congress passes a full-year continuing resolution, the head of the House Armed Services Committee warned on Wednesday.
Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, and Senate Armed Services Chairman Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Congress must focus on passing three things to take the first steps to rebuild the military: a fiscal 2017 appropriations bill, a fiscal 2017 supplemental and a fiscal 2018 budget that fully funds the military’s readiness accounts.
The government is operating under a continuing resolution through the end of April, at which point lawmakers will have to either pass a fiscal 2017 appropriations bill, pass another continuing resolution or shut down the government.
Thornberry, who leads the House Armed Services Committee, said another continuing resolution would have dire effects on the military. All but one Army unit set to deploy would have to stop all training after July 15, meaning some troops heading to South Korea or Europe may not be fully trained. In addition, the Marine Corps would cease all flight operations in July and be forced to get rid of about 2,000 troops, he said.
Still, McCain pointed to the Senate’s full plate as a hurdle that might prevent lawmakers from getting to pass the needed budget bills.
“The agenda in the Senate is crowded with Obamacare, with the budget, with [Supreme Court nominee Neil] Gorsuch, who’ll be coming to the floor as well, that’ll take at least a week,” McCain said at a Defense Writers Group breakfast. “And then of course we come to the shutdown. So I’ve been talking to Sen. [Mitch] McConnell at length about us at least trying to take up the appropriations bill that was passed through the House. I think it’s almost criminal if we don’t.”
The fiscal 2017 supplemental also faces challenges in Congress because it puts most of the $30 billion defense increase into the base budget, which will require Congress to change the Budget Control Act caps, instead of the overseas contingency operations account, which is not subject to the caps.
Thornberry said he “expected it to be in OCO so it could be done quickly.”
“I don’t care what label is on the money, what I care about is getting the money done and begin that healing so we can have something more than half of the Navy’s airplanes that can fly again,” he said. “I think the easiest way to do it is through OCO and hopefully that can happen quickly.”
Trump’s plan for fiscal 2018 would spend $603 billion on base national defense, a number both McCain and Thornberry have criticized as too low. Instead, the two lawmakers have pushed for a $640 billion base budget.
But Trump’s plan is unlikely to pass Congress anyway because it offsets the $54 billion defense boost with $54 billion in cuts to non-defense spending, including accounts at the State Department or Department of Homeland Security.
