Congressional leaders plan to send the fiscal 2016 defense policy bill to President Obama on Tuesday, starting a 10-day clock in which he must decide whether to keep his promise to veto the legislation.
The dispute centers around $38 billion added to a war funding account that is intended to replace regular operations and maintenance funding reduced by sequestration. The war-funding account is not subject to the caps in the 2011 Budget Control Act, which lawmakers from both parties want to repeal, but have not been able to agree on a formula.
The White House, backed by congressional Democratic leaders, has derided the spending fix as a “gimmick” and has refused to support the legislation unless Republicans agree to negotiate on lifting all the caps and ending the now five-year-old budget impasse.
“The concerns that we’ve expressed about it is it advocates essentially the use of a slush fund for funding critically important national security priorities. We believe that’s utterly irresponsible. And the president’s indicated that he would veto it,” White House spokesmah Josh Earnest said.
But House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry, speaking at a forum Tuesday at the Brookings Institution, said the bill authorized the funding shift because military leaders had said it was the minimum they needed.
“In some ways I think this is kind of an inside Washington political game that loses sight of what we are asking men and women to do for us … and in that way, I think it is tragic,” the Texas Republican said.
Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain, sitting beside Thornberry, said the mandatory sequestration process “is a disaster in so many ways,” and that both men want to fix the “broken system” of funding defense.
“This is really an unnecessary fight and I really wish he would reserve that fight” for the budget process, the Arizona Republican said of Obama. The policy bill, unlike the appropriations bill, does not allocate money for programs.
