A day after the House passed its version of the defense policy bill, Defense Secretary Ash Carter stuck to his recommendation that the president veto the bill if it contains a “budget gimmick” that is “gambling with warfighting money at a time of war.”
Spokesman Peter Cook said Carter has “deep concerns” about provisions he claimed “would underfund the Department of Defense’s overseas warfighting accounts by $18 billion and spend that money on programmatic items that are not our highest priorities for national defense.”
The Senate will next take up the measure. Because the House version moves money from the warfighting account to the baseline budget, overseas funds will run out by April next year.
Cook said while Carter is ready to work with Congress on “a path forward,” the secretary “would recommend a veto of this legislation in its current form.”
Cook said the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act would begin to undermine the stability provided by the bipartisan budget agreement, and force the Pentagon to “buy force structure today without the resources to sustain it tomorrow.
“It’s a path to a hollow force and exacerbates the readiness challenges we currently have,” Cook said.
