The Senate starts work on the fiscal 2017 defense policy bill this week, but analysts believe it’s just the beginning of a long process with a lot of daylight still left between the two chambers’ priorities.
The Senate Armed Services Committee begins its markups on Monday, some open to the public and others behind closed doors. By the end of the week, senators should have finished their version of the fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act to send to the full Senate, a process the House completed in late April.
While the two leaders of this process, Rep. Mac Thornberry and Sen. John McCain, have a lot of the same areas of focus, such as reforming the Pentagon’s acquisition system and cutting bureaucracy, analysts predict that the conference committee will have its work cut out for it to reconcile the two bills.
“At this point, I think there’s are probably going to be more different than similar,” said Justin Johnson, a defense analyst with the Heritage Foundation.
Both armed services committee chairmen have promised to tackle the reform of Goldwater-Nichols, the 30-year-old law governing the military’s organization from geographic combatant commands to who reports to the president.
Thornberry’s mark on the House side included reforms like elevating U.S. Cyber Command to become its own combatant command, boosting the responsibilities of the Joint Chiefs chairman and changing joint billet requirements for officers looking to advance.
McCain, however, has suggested that he will tackle much more controversial reforms, such as reorganizing the current geographic combatant commands or even consolidating U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Southern Command.
It’s unclear what compromise the two committees will reach, but Michael O’Hanlon, an analyst with the Brookings Institution, said he hopes the final bill looks more like Thornberry’s in this area.
“I think the House’s view of Goldwater-Nichols II, which emphasizes modest rather than wholesale reforms in command structures, is sensible and sound and I hope the Senate will follow suit,” he said.
A major fight is likely to play out over the U.S. Air Force’s use of Russian-made RD-180 rocket engines to launch national security satellites into space. While the House committee last month doubled the number of Russian engines the U.S. can use to meet the Air Force’s request, McCain has been a staunch critic, saying that the U.S. should end its reliance on Russia as soon as possible.
“We’ll see if we can’t act on the floor here, then obviously it’ll be a conference item,” he said of trying to strip out the House increase.
But Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., is a senior member of the defense appropriations subcommittee and has been one of the lawmakers leading the charge to boost the number of rockets.
He told the Washington Examiner that he’s sure the appropriations committee will be able to restore a higher number of rockets in actual funding bills regardless of what the authorization bill says. United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, makes rockets using the RD-180 in Alabama.
“While I am a strong advocate for the development of an all-American rocket engine that can launch our national security assets into orbit, our military leaders continually emphasize the need for the United States to have the ability to purchase additional RD-180s,” he said in a statement. “I will continue to use all avenues to ensure that we safeguard assured access to space and protect American taxpayers while we transition off of foreign-made engines.”
Johnson said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., could be an advocate on the Senate Armed Services Committee for buying more RD-180s, but instead expects the senator to let Shelby and McCain duke it out between the authorization and appropriation processes.
“Why join the fight at this point? If you’re a sitting member of SASC, even if you’re Sessions, if you offer something like this, you’re just going to upset the chairman and you know it doesn’t necessarily contribute to moving the ball forward,” he said.
Another huge fight is likely brewing over McCain’s insistence that the Air Force disclose how much the B-21 bomber contract, estimated to be valued at about $80 billion, was worth. Mackenzie Eaglen, an analyst with the American Enterprise Institute, said she expects Defense Secretary Ash Carter to recommend a veto over this issue.
“I think a major missed point of contention will be McCain’s push to force the Air Force to disclose the bomber contract award amount. Not sure where HASC will fall on it but the provision will certainly cause a major fight between the Senate and WH/Pentagon,” she said via email. Northrop Grumman won the bomber contract last year.
The funding method used by the House is also likely to cause some conflict with both the Senate and the administration, since Thornberry funded to the president’s top line but put more money toward base priorities while cutting the amount available for overseas operations, analysts said. The war chest has only enough money to cover U.S. actions overseas until April, a move Thornberry has defended as necessary to prioritize readiness in the base budget.
There will likely be some areas of compromise between the two chambers, though one unexpected one is requiring women to register for the draft. Rep. Duncan Hunter’s amendment to make all 18-26-year-old women sign up for the Selective Service passed the House Armed Services Committee by a 32-30 bipartisan vote in April, and McCain said he’s leaning toward supporting the proposal as well.
But it still has a long way to go before it reaches the president’s desk. While it may have support in the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, it still needs to pass each full chamber, where a lot of people who have strong opinions will weigh in.
“I’d be surprised if there wasn’t some debate of this in the House, either an amendment to strike it or modify it or something. Because I think there are a lot of concerns from people on the right who think this is going in the wrong direction,” Johnson said.
