Defense spending has become the focal point in the fight to lift federally-imposed and increasingly unpopular spending caps set by the sequester.
Senate Democrats are vowing to block the fiscal 2016 Defense Department spending bill unless Congress strikes a deal to lift the both domestic and military spending caps, which will force billions of dollars in across-the-board cuts next year.
“When this bill comes to the floor, the Senate Democratic caucus is going to recommend to its members not to vote to proceed to this bill,” Senate Minority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., told reporters Thursday. “We need to have the highest level of negotiation between the White House and the leaders in Congress to work out an agreement that finally puts an end to sequestration.”
Democrats are also opposing the fiscal 2016 National Defense Authorization Act, which the Senate is currently debating.
President Obama has threatened to veto the defense authorization bill because it adheres to the overall sequester caps, but calls for an additional $38 billion that would come from a fund meant to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are not subjected to the sequester.
Senate Democrats don’t appear ready to block the authorization bill, but they are calling the defense spending boost a gimmick and are demanding equal spending increases for domestic programs. Democrats have been fuming for weeks about the GOP plan to let only the Defense Department escape the sequester.
“The bill before us is designed to write an end run around sequestration for the Department of Defense by exploiting a provision that exempts spending caps,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Thursday.
Democrats will try to amend the defense authorization measure next week with a proposal to use overseas contingency money to increase domestic and defense spending “in a proportional and fair manner,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I.
“The Department of Defense is critical to our national security,” Reed told reporters Thursday. “But so are other federal agencies, whether it’s the FBI, the Department of Justice or Homeland Security thwarting terrorist plots.”
Congress appears headed for a showdown over the caps, which were imposed under the 2011 Budget Control Act and were intended to be replaced by spending and entitlement reforms that never materialized. Some Republicans say they are willing to lift the caps, but only if entitlement or tax reform comes with it.
President Obama proposed tax increases in his 2016 budget proposal that would be used to pay for ending the sequester, but that’s a non-starter with the GOP.
With the 2016 presidential campaign season about to get started, it’s unlikely lawmakers will come to any broad agreement on taxes or spending on Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security.
Instead, Republican aides said, it’s more likely the two parties will strike a last-minute, bipartisan deal to lift the caps as they did in December of 2013. Lawmakers came up with the Bipartisan Budget Act, which temporarily suspended the caps and paid for the move with an increase in federal fees and a change in corporate pension rules in order to increase tax receipts.
Republican aides said they expect the negotiations to happen in the fall, as the end of the fiscal year approaches and, as has been the case in many recent years, another government shutdown looms.
