A leading House Republican unveiled a $705 billion Pentagon funding package, blowing past President Trump’s official national security spending as defense hawks seek to reverse years of spending cuts amid worsening international threats.
Rep. Mac Thornberry, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, plans to reach that overall funding level by padding a $640 billion base defense spending package with an additional $65 billion provided through a special Overseas Contingency Operations fund created to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s well above Trump’s official request, which Thornberry dismissed as a legacy of the Obama administration rather than a true reflection of the new administration’s policies.
“When the budget came up here on May 23rd, there were exactly two Trump-appointed, Senate-confirmed appointees at the Department of Defense, one of whom had been there a week,” Thornberry, a Texas Republican, told reporters Thursday. “It’s the Obama budget request, because there wasn’t anybody at DOD to write a Trump request.”
Still, Thornberry’s proposal, particularly his plan to use special Overseas Contingency Operations funding as a way to get around federal defense spending caps that have been in place since 2011, could meet resistance in the Trump White House. Mick Mulvaney, the new director of the Office of Management and Budget, fought such maneuvers during his tenure in the House, calling them “gimmicks” to avoid fiscal responsibility.
“If appropriations come across with any OCO money hidden in it, I’ll do everything I can to strip it,” Mulvaney said in 2015. “It’s a slush fund and gimmick, and our own budget called it a backdoor trick last year.”
Thornberry isn’t just using the annual defense bill to set policy for fiscal 2018, however. He suggested it could be the opening step in a process to eliminate — or at least elevate — the defense spending caps that were imposed as part of a budget standoff in 2010.
“We’re still talking to see whether we can come to a common understanding,” Thornberry said, referring to his counterparts on the budget and appropriations panels. “For me, if I am going to agree to do less than I think is necessary to fix the problems facing the military today … I want something to where [sequestration] is not hanging over our heads.”
