President Trump’s fiscal year 2017 supplemental budget request for the Defense Department and national security priorities will require Congress to change the budget caps for a fiscal year that’s nearly half over, according to budget documents released Thursday.
That makes the supplemental far more likely to stall on Capitol Hill, where it can take months and much compromise to hammer out a new budget deal.
The national security supplemental request would add $30 billion to defense and $3 billion to non-defense for the border wall and the implementation of executive orders. It would also cut $18 billion from other non-defense programs, leaving the supplemental $10 billion above the budget caps set for fiscal 2017.
Todd Harrison, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said a new budet deal to accommodate the supplemental will not be able to get enough Democratic support in the Senate to clear the 60-vote threshold and pass as written because of both the funding for the wall and the cuts to nondefense.
“This will probably be dead on arrival in its current form,” he said.
The supplemental request will add $25 billion for base defense and $5 billion in the overseas contingency operations account that is not covered by the caps. Many expected the entire supplemental request to be put into this account because it is not capped by the Budget Control Act.
John Roth, the acting Pentagon comptroller, said Thursday afternoon that most money was put into the base budget because most of the request was for base requirements, such as procurement or troop levels or training.
“We put the money where it belonged,” he said.
He also said the request represents not only what the Pentagon needs, but also what it can spend before the end of the fiscal year, since anything left in operations and maintenance accounts will be lost Oct. 1. As a result, items that could not be put under contract quickly will be punted to the fiscal 2018 request.
While prospects are dim for Trump’s proposed supplemental, a lawmaker-driven fiscal 2017 supplemental could still happen. Harrison said he expects Congress to pick out the pieces of Trump’s supplemental that it likes, such as the defense increase, and then pass that, with all the funding going to the overseas contingency operations account.
That means Congress could still pass a $30 billion boost to defense for fiscal 2017 in OCO, but not fund the wall or cut $18 billion from non-defense.
Roth said it’s critical for Congress to pass a fiscal 2017 appropriations bill to stop the Pentagon’s “financial shell game” of moving money around that’s been forced by continuing resolutions. He said a full-year continuing resolution if lawmakers can’t reach a deal before the end of April would be “extremely harmful.”
Trump’s proposal actually uses the overseas contingency operations account the way it was meant to be used — for war funding. Of the $5.1 billion in the OCO request, about $1 billion will go to missions in Afghanistan, $2 billion will go to operations in Iraq, and about $2 billion will go to the ISIS fight, according to a supplemental request released by the Pentagon. The supplemental also requests about 4,000 additional U.S. troops for overseas operations, including 200 in Iraq or Syria and about 3,800 for in-theater support. It also includes about $600 million to replace an Osprey lost in combat, presumably the one that went down during the raid in Yemen this year that also killed a Navy SEAL, and also buys “high priority ISR assets, as well as other special operations requirements.”
A portion of the OCO supplemental request will also go to refurbishments at Guantanamo Bay, such as improvements to troops’ barracks, now that the new administration seems determined to keep it open, Roth said.
The remaining $25 billion in the request in the base budget will go toward increasing readiness and replace aging platforms. The Army and Navy are each requesting about $8.3 billion, the Air Force is requesting $7.4 billion and the Marines are requesting $1.1 billion.
In the Army, $2.8 billion would go to restoring and modernizing equipment in several communities, such as aviation, unmanned aerial systems and air and missile defense; $1.3 billion would cover enhanced training; and $871 million would go to fulfilling the fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act provision to stop soldier cuts.
The supplemental also covers other things lawmakers authorized in the fiscal 2017 NDAA but then never paid for with an updated appropriations bill, including the 2.1 percent pay raise for troops and Defense Department civilians, Roth said.
The Navy’s request will buy an additional 24 F/A-18E/F Super Hornets to help fill the strike fighter gap and six more P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, both built by Boeing. It also funds the amphibious transport dock Ponce being forward deployed for a year, 14,000 additional flight hours to increase training and spare parts for nine different types of aircraft, including the F-35.
The Marine Corps request would go to missions such as closing capability gaps, including troops’ ability to target enemy drones, and increasing the number of flying hours for pilots.
The Air Force would buy five additional F-35A variants from Lockheed Martin for $690 million, and would also use the additional funding request to add 4,000 airmen at a cost of $224 million, help reduce the fighter and drone pilot shortfalls for $126 million and modify its fourth and fifth-generation jets for about $467 million.
