The massive $1.1 trillion spending bill waiting for President Obama’s signature doesn’t do much for the Pentagon.
It doesn’t allow officials to save money by reducing benefits, as the Obama administration had requested. It doesn’t allow the armed forces to retire weapons it wanted to shed, such as the A-10 attack jet.
And it doesn’t solve the problem of military readiness as an unfunded mandate. Lawmakers who focus on defense issues will return in January to the same point where they were a year ago: trying to figure out how to rescue the Pentagon from drastic annual sequestration cuts mandated by the 2011 Budget Control Act.
It won’t be easy. Sequestration continues to exist because the political will to reverse it hasn’t been there and isn’t likely to emerge quickly in the 114th Congress.
“When that solution comes, it will be a tough vote on both sides. For some of my colleagues, it might be a fatal vote,” outgoing House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon, R-Calif., said in his Dec. 4 farewell speech to colleagues.
“I pray that you will hold this thought in your hearts when that vote comes: Remember the great sacrifice our troops are making around the world.”
The spending bill for the rest of fiscal 2015 gives the Pentagon $554.2 billion in discretionary spending, about the same as last year thanks to a bipartisan budget deal reached a year ago that partially reduced the sequestration burden.
The big difference comes in war spending — $64 billion this year, versus $85.2 billion in 2014. Though the Pentagon received more money for the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the fiscal 2015 figure reflects expected savings from reduced operations in Afghanistan, where the NATO command is set to formally end combat operations at the end of this year.
The bill also includes $5.4 billion in emergency funding to fight the Ebola virus, both in West Africa and in the United States, and up to $1 billion to counter Russian aggression in Eastern Europe.
“This package makes the most of each and every dollar, roots out waste and abuse, reins in bureaucratic overreach and provides stable funding for important national programs — including our national defense — for the remainder of the fiscal year,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky.
The bill reflects a conflict of priorities between Congress and the Pentagon, with lawmakers adding some $4 billion to the administration’s request to fund weapons the Pentagon hadn’t asked for, such as more EA-18G Growler surveillance jets, or to keep equipment the military wanted to retire, such as the A-10.
Lawmakers also mostly resisted the Pentagon’s request for limits on military benefits — a political hot potato in wartime — agreeing only to keep the increase in troops’ pay to 1 percent, freeze pay for general officers, increase some prescription medicine copays and put modest limits on the growth of housing allowances.
The big loser in those funding shifts was the account for operation and maintenance of forces already in the field. Though the $161.7 billion appropriated for fiscal 2015 was $1.8 billion more than in the previous year, it is not keeping pace with what is needed to keep up military readiness. Unless something is done, that gap is expected to grow to between $200 billion and $300 billion over the next five years, according to one analysis.
Sequestration is the main reason why that gap is likely to grow. Military leaders have warned that more drastic cuts could make them unable to carry out important missions.
“Repealing defense sequestration is among my top priorities in the new Congress,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
