Congressional Republicans are pushing ahead with their plan to bypass mandatory spending caps and give the Pentagon money for operations and maintenance that military leaders say they urgently need but insist they don’t want.
The $38 billion inserted into a war-funding account not subject to the caps has become the latest in a string of summer budget battles that could lead to another government shutdown.
Republicans admit the idea is just a quick fix but say it’s urgently needed to keep the U.S. military’s edge in an increasingly dangerous world while Washington’s leaders try for a fourth year in a row to untangle a budget mess: mandatory sequestration cuts — half of which come from defense — that never were intended to take effect.
But Democrats are demanding negotiations on a permanent solution, and President Obama has threatened to veto any bill that authorizes or appropriates what the White House has derided as a “gimmick.”
The first test is likely to come at the end of the month, which is when House and Senate leaders expect to have passed the annual bill setting defense policy. Negotiators from both chambers are working out differences between versions passed by each, both by strong bipartisan margins.
Leaders of the armed services committees in both chambers have said the differences between the two bills are not that large. “We’re getting rid of a lot of the issues just in the preconference,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain told the Washington Examiner.
Barring a veto, the bill could become law for the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year — the first time in nearly two decades. Republicans are hoping the White House won’t block the bill and put at risk everything from acquisition reform to pay and benefits for troops serving overseas in combat zones.
“I’m hoping the president will realize that the place for a veto is on the money bill, because it’s about money. I’m hoping against hope that he will realize that this authorization is for the benefit of the men and women who are serving. We don’t want to punish them because of a procedural problem within the United States Senate,” McCain said.
The Arizona Republican has held up consideration of a number of civilian Pentagon nominees as insurance against a presidential veto and pressed Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on the issue during an appearance before his committee on Tuesday.
Carter told McCain he supports Obama’s veto threat, which the president repeated during a July 6 visit to the Pentagon.
“I’m hoping, Mr. Chairman, that we can do better than that choice and we don’t continue down what I’ve called a road to nowhere,” Carter answered when McCain asked whether he would choose to hold up all Pentagon spending rather than accept bypassing the mandatory budget caps.
“Well, you may be presented with that choice,” McCain shot back.
McCain and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, have been among the leading voices in Congress calling for a permanent end to the sequestration requirements laid down in the Budget Control Act of 2011 as an incentive for lawmakers of both parties to reach a deal on reducing federal spending.
That didn’t happen, and neither Republicans nor Democrats are any closer four years later to making the compromises necessary to reach that point. Meanwhile, both McCain and Thornberry last week pointed to the Army’s decision in response to previous budget cuts to shrink by 40,000 troops over the next two years, from 490,000 to 450,000, as proof of how sequestration has harmed the military’s readiness.
“People who believe the world is safer, that we can do with less defense spending and 40,000 fewer soldiers, will take this as good news. I am not one of those people,” Thornberry said.
