A Senate subcommittee on Tuesday approved a $575.9 billion fiscal 2016 appropriations bill that includes a controversial plan to shift $36.5 billion in operating and maintenance costs to a war-spending account that’s not subject to automatic budget cuts.
The shift mirrors what is occurring in the authorization bill, which has drawn Democratic opposition and a veto threat from the White House. It’s a bid by lawmakers to bypass automatic sequestration cuts mandated by a 2011 law, which military officials have warned are causing a readiness crisis.
“We have worked diligently to support the top priorities of our military services and defense agencies,” said Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee. “The bill before us today recommends funding to increase readiness, sustain U.S. force structure and provide stability to our national military manufacturing capabilities.”
But the White House and most congressional Democrats oppose shifting money to the war accounts, along with a handful of Republican budget hawks, saying instead that the sequestration requirement should be repealed.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the subcommittee’s ranking Democrat, called shifting money to the war account a “gimmick,” and said, “Let’s face this problem head on — we need to negotiate a budget deal that addresses all the needs of our country and sets us on a sustainable budget path.”
The political will to repeal sequestration isn’t there, though a bipartisan budget deal worked out in December 2013 reversed $31.5 billion of the automatic cuts for fiscal 2015 by extending sequestration savings through 2023.
The subcommittee’s bill recommends $86.8 billion for overseas contingency operations. It boosts the Navy’s shipbuilding account by $1.6 billion for a total of $18.2 billion, and missile defense by $262 million for a total of $8.2 billion.
