Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Tuesday that the country will face greater security risks and the military will have to rethink its strategy without a House budget proposal that includes full 2018 Pentagon funding, and heavily criticized lawmakers who continue to fail to pass budgets on time.
“I ask that you not let disagreements on domestic policy continue to hold our nation’s defense hostage,” Mattis said. “We need Congress back in the driver’s seat, not in the spectator’s seat of the Budget Control Act’s indiscriminate and automatic cuts.”
He said earlier that troops are in harm’s way “despite Congress’ abrogation of its constitutional responsibility to provide stable funding. … I regret that without sustained, predictable appropriations, my presence here today wastes your time, because no strategy can survive without the funding necessary to resource it.”
Mattis made the comments to the House Armed Services Committee just hours before the chamber was set to vote on a budget bill that includes a continuing resolution for most of the federal government but $700 billion in annual funding for defense. The comments also come ahead of yet another government shutdown threat as funding is set to expire at the end of the day Thursday.
The bill was expected to pass the House along party lines but be blocked in the Senate by Democrats, who oppose passing defense spending without including nondefense domestic spending in an annual budget.
“With it, we can restore the [military’s] competitive advantage or begin down the trail of restoring the competitive advantage that has been eroded,” Mattis said when asked about the bill during his testimony. “Without it, we will be put into the position where the strategy would have to be changed and we would have to accept greater risk, especially in terms of deterring adversaries who might think we are weaker because they register where our readiness is being eroded.”
The defense secretary came to the committee to discuss the Pentagon’s recently released National Defense Strategy and Nuclear Posture Review, but the discussion was largely focused on Congress’ failure to pass annual funding for the military, which is now more than four months overdue.
The military has been funded by temporary continuing resolutions since the beginning of October as lawmakers wrangle over lifting Budget Control Act spending caps and immigration reform.
Mattis said military commanders in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan write to him asking for help in getting a regular budget. He also warned the House committee that running the military on a stopgap measure for the rest of the year could ground aircraft, keep warships at dockside, deplete ammunition, and delay vital contracts.
Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, the House Armed Services Committee chairman, called Mattis’ testimony the “clearest most direct bluntest statement I have heard from any administration witness” on the need for a defense budget and he prodded the Senate to act on the House bill.
“We have given the Senate every opportunity and we’re doing so again today, to fully fund the military, so they need to do that,” Thornberry said.
The Senate was expected to amend the legislation and send it back to the House before the current stopgap budget expires on Thursday.
“The big question is what are they going to send back to us. I don’t know that,” Thornberry said.
The coming Democratic pushback was evident during the hearing. Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the House Armed Services Committee ranking member, blasted the bill for ignoring the needs of the departments of State, Homeland Security and Justice.
“I always bristle a little bit when I hear ‘How can we hold defense hostage to domestic local priorities,’ as if those domestic local priorities were some kind of luxury that we just engage in for fun and enjoyment and aren’t really important. All of those things are important,” Smith said.
He told Mattis that prioritizing defense over the other spending priorities such as law enforcement and homeland security is “patently absurd and insulting” and asked the defense secretary how it might affect the military.
“Doesn’t that make your job vastly more difficult?” Smith said.
