The House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday approved a fiscal 2016 spending bill for the Pentagon that contains a controversial plan to use war funding to cover operations and maintenance costs.
The panel approved the bill on a bipartisan voice vote in spite of a White House warning that $37 billion in regular spending for operations and maintenance was inappropriately shifted into the overseas contingency operations account.
The shift was engineered by committee leaders to replace automatic defense budget cuts required by a 2011 law, after they were unable to find a political formula to repeal the requirement. The war funding account does not fall under sequester-related spending caps, but the base budget does.
On Monday, Office of Management and Budget head Shaun Donovan decried “budget gimmicks” in a letter to House Appropriations Chairman Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., citing the transfer of base budget funds into the war spending account in order to get around budget caps.
“We have a number of serious concerns about this legislation, which would underfund these important [defense] investments in the base budget and instead rely on budget gimmicks that have been criticized by members of both parties,” Donovan wrote.
Military leaders have been pushing for years to repeal the cuts from the sequestration process, saying they are causing unacceptable harm to the readiness of the armed forces.
In all, the bill allots $578.6 billion for the Pentagon and nuclear weapons programs of the Energy Department, an increase of $24.4 billion from fiscal 2015 and $800 million more than President Obama had requested. It includes 88.4 billion in overseas contingency operations, roughly double the amount Obama requested.
“Now, more than ever, we must ensure that our troops and officers have the resources they need to protect this great nation and our way of life,” Rogers said in a statement. “This bill makes responsible use of every tax dollar to give our armed forces the resources they need to stay safe, prepared, and in peak fighting form.”
“This legislation will help ensure that our armed forces are agile, efficient, ready and lethal,” Defense Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., said in the statement. “It reflects the reality that we live in an increasingly dangerous world, and we must guarantee that our military and intelligence community have the strength and capability to meet the rise of Islamic terror groups and other emerging threats and deter would-be aggressors like Iran, China, and Russia and North Korea. I am proud that we have kept faith with the brave men and women, and their families, who selflessly serve our country.”
In the equipment portion, the bill includes money to procure two destroyers, three littoral combat ships, 65 F-35 joint strike fighters, 64 AH-64 Apache helicopters, 16 P-8A Poseidon aircraft, 102 UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, 12 KC-46 tankers, seven EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft and five F/A-18 Super Hornet fighters.
