Rep. Mac Thornberry said Wednesday it would be a mistake for Congress to pass another stop-gap budget to fund the military at the end of this month.
A series of deadly summer naval and aviation mishaps are evidence of the toll budget dysfunction in Washington has taken on the military, and a continuing budget resolution would only worsen deep problems with armed services readiness, Thornberry said during a conference keynote speech near the Pentagon.
Congress appears poised to pass a continuing resolution, or CR, which would lock in current spending levels, to fund the military in lieu of passing an annual budget.
“We’re going to be doing the same thing we’ve been doing, the same thing that got us into this mess, passing a CR, I expect at least until December,” he said. “I cannot hide the fact that I am disheartened and unhappy at this state of affairs.”
The stop-gap measures are loathed by the Pentagon because they bar new initiatives and make long-term planning difficult, but they have become a common tool used by lawmakers when budget deals cannot be reached.
Meanwhile, Thornberry said four times as many troops have died in noncombat operations than in combat in 2017.
This summer, two separate Navy ship collisions in the Pacific killed 17 sailors and two Marine Corps aviation mishaps killed 19 troops. The incidents triggered service-wide training and safety reviews in both services.
Thornberry said relentless operations tempos among the services and the budget woes appear to be a factor.
“I’m afraid that not only the Navy accident rates, the other accident rates we see going up, are but one reflection of the cost that is taking its toll,” he said.
The House passed both a National Defense Authorization Act and a defense appropriations bill in July. The Senate is set to debate and vote on its version of the NDAA but has made little progress on a defense spending bill, making a CR all but inevitable with only a few works left until the fiscal year ends.
“We are going to come to the end of September without an ability to have a full-year appropriation bill, which is exactly what we need for ourselves and what we need to show the rest of the world that we are competent and able to stand up and defend ourselves,” Thornberry said.
