The Pentagon is cheering the Senate’s rejection of an $18 billion funding boost to its war-fighting account.
An amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, sponsored by Sen. John McCain, would have added $18 billion to the Pentagon’s overseas contingency operations budget. The measure was blocked Thursday on a non-party line vote.
You might think that with the Department of Defense facing a financial squeeze in numerous areas, it would have welcomed the cash infusion, but you would be wrong.
“We are pleased that the amendment did not pass and we hope that the Senate similarly adheres to the Bipartisan Budget Act when it considers the defense appropriations bill,” said spokesman Peter Cook at a Pentagon briefing after the amendment’s demise.
The Pentagon, it seems, values “certainty” over cold, hard cash.
“As the secretary has said in the past, certainty in the budget process going forward is critically important to this department,” Cook said.
McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., both pleaded with their Senate colleagues to approve the extra funding. “If you vote ‘no,’ you better never say ‘I love the military’ anymore, because if you really loved them, you’d do something about it,” Graham said.
After Democrats and some Republicans blocked the amendment, McCain issued an angry statement saying the vote “put the lives of our men and women in uniform at greater risk.”
“Our senior military commanders have been increasingly dire in their warnings about the grave impact of arbitrary budget cuts on our military and our national security. Those that chose to ignore those warnings will have to answer for the consequences,” McCain said
But the Pentagon has a different view of the Senate version of the NDAA, saying that provisions of the Senate bill “micromanage the department” by “rejecting in troubling ways the judgments of the department’s senior civilian and military leaders.”
In rejecting the idea of a significant increase in overall spending, Cook argued that the extra $18 billion might put the Pentagon on the hook for funding programs that could turn out to be unaffordable in the future.
“Would it have been spent on programs, for example, that we do not feel like were the wisest use of our resources at this time? Or would they be spent on programs that would require additional funding in the future to support those programs, that had not yet been accounted for in this legislation?” he asked.
Cook reiterated the Pentagon position that in its current form, the secretary would recommend to the president that the NDAA be vetoed.
