Congress appears ready to punt on the annual defense budget with another stop-gap measure again this fall, despite warnings from the military and a string of deadly Navy and Marine Corps crashes and collisions this summer.
House Speaker Paul Ryan acknowledged this week that a continuing budget resolution, or CR, will “probably be necessary” to buy lawmakers more time.
The measure would hold defense spending at current levels for months or longer even as President Trump, the Pentagon, and Republican defense hawks in Congress are eyeing big spending increases to shore up what they say are overburdened and underfunded military forces.
“The stated goal in the Defense Department’s Fiscal Year 2018 budget request was to use the additional resources to rebuild the U.S. armed forces and improve lethality,” Christopher Sherwood, a Defense Department spokesman, told the Washington Examiner. “A short-term CR will delay achieving that goal. A long-term CR will make that goal unachievable.”
The Pentagon has put together an updated plan in case a stop-gap budget measure occurs, Sherwood said.
But that plan will not be able to fill shortfalls with the additional troops requested in its 2018 budget or perform depot maintenance. Instead it would on forces deployed to places such as the Middle East and Afghanistan, he said.
Congress has until to Sept. 30 to agree on a plan to raise the debt ceiling or face a government shutdown. That budget wrangling is occurring as the military suffers from a summer of deadly naval and aviation mishaps.
Two Navy ship collisions killed a total of 17 sailors in the Pacific, two Marine Corps aircraft crashes killed 19 troops, and an Army Black Hawk crash killed five soldiers, raising questions over whether the incidents are evidence of overburdened and underfunded forces.
Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, called for a fleet-wide review of the Navy following deadly collisions involving the destroyer USS John S. McCain on Monday and the USS Fitzgerald in June. Gen. Robert Neller, the Marine Corps commandant, ordered a 24-hour grounding of all aviation units following deadly crashes of an MV-22 Osprey this month and a KC-130 tanker in July.
In June, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis testified to Congress that instability in defense funding and lawmakers’ use of 30 continuing resolutions in the past decade are wearing down the services and putting troops’ lives at risk.
Congress funded the military with stop-gap measures between last fall and April.
“Regarding this coming, looming CR, from a readiness standpoint, [it] will have an even worse impact than previous years,” said Thomas Callender, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
A continuing resolution would put off the proposed Pentagon budget and House and Senate defense budget bills aimed directly at plowing new funding into military operations and maintenance, including more Navy training at sea and military pilot flight hours, and to shore up overstretched forces, Callender said.
Both the armed services committees in the House and Senate have raised alarms over the state of the military and use of continuing resolutions.
Rep. Mac Thornberry, the House Armed Services chairman, warned this week that two services “have had to take a knee” and that increased operations and funding cuts could be to blame.
“These are just the conditions that can lead to an increase in the kinds of accidents we are witnessing,” he said following the McCain collision.
After the spate of mishaps this summer, Congress “damn sure better” find a way to provide more defense funding, said Bryan McGrath, a naval expert and managing director of the FerryBridge Group consulting service.
“The country looked into the abyss in the late 70s and talked about a hollow force, and it’s deeply unsatisfying to think we could be spending $600 billion a year and have a hollow force, but that’s where we are going,” McGrath said.
