The politics of funding a divided federal government has always pitted administrations against Congress, but according to House speaker Paul Ryan, the Obama administration is taking it to new levels.
A leaked report published by Politico showed naked partisanship on display at the Pentagon—and some interesting language, to boot—in providing congressional Democrats cover for voting against the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), an annual bill that sets funding levels for the Department of Defense and military branches.
The Obama administration is opposing efforts by congressional Republicans to add spending to the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) budget, something Democrats call a “gimmick” that runs afoul of last year’s Bipartisan Budget Act (BBA). The BBA was the latest in the series of budget bills following the mandatory implementation of sequestration, which took effect after Congress and the White House failed to come to spending reduction agreements required by the Budget Control Act of 2011.
Passage of last year’s BBA provided temporary sequestration relief for this fiscal year and next, and was criticized by budget hawks for weakening sequestration levels.
The memo outlines the DoD and administration plan to fight back against GOP-sought increases for overseas contingency operations, suggesting the placement of op-eds in national papers, using sympathetic “outside influencers”, and other lobbying tactics, like focusing on wooing skeptical Republicans.
One quote from the leaked memo, authored by Undersecretary of Defense for Comptroller Mike McCord and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs Stephen Hedger, shows Defense officials referring to the president’s veto power as a “weapon” to be “deployed”—like a JDAM or Hellfire missile. Ryan calls this language “shameless.”
Recognizing that overt displays of partisanship from military leaders is generally frowned upon, the memo’s authors suggest to Secretary of Defense Ash Carter that “Appearing at these [democratic congressional conference] meetings does impact votes, but also risks the appearance of partisanship. . . . As a general matter, avoiding this risk is advisable, but in an ‘all in’ approach to opposing the gimmick, the risk would be worth taking.”
The memo also recommended to Secretary Carter that “Like last year, we need to help House Democrats justify their voting against both [defense authorization and appropriations] bills on the House floor.”
In a release, Ryan responded:
The House and Senate have both passed versions of the NDAA, and must finish a bi-cameral conference committee before a final bill can be voted on by both chambers and sent to the president. Similarly, both have passed defense appropriations bills, but Senate Democrats have rejected the House-passed version, putting the measure on hold until the NDAA can become law.
Being an election year, the administration worries that if House and Senate Democratic leaders “do not take a firm line…we may need to reevaluate our posture and the intensity of our effort.”
