In a victory for defense hawks, the Senate Budget Committee approved Thursday an increase to $96 billion for a special fund that allows the Defense Department to get around federal budgetary spending caps.
The increase was passed through the committee on an amendment offered by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H. It added $38 billion to the Senate’s initial mark of $58 billion for overseas contingency operations funding, known commonly as “OCO,” and passed on a party line 12-10 vote. The amendment raised the Senate’s number to match the level passed by the House Budget committee earlier in the day after a contentious, late-night debate.
The overall Senate budget also passed late Thursday on a party line 12-10 vote, setting the stage for a contentious floor debate that starts Monday afternoon. Due to the Senate’s own rules it placed on the budget, a majority of 60 votes will be needed to pass the OCO increase, significantly increasing the chances it will not survive a full floor vote.
Graham said of the added spending, “it’s not my goal to increase spending, it’s my goal to increase the ability to defend America overall.”
Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., voiced the fiscal conservative’s opposition to the defense spending increase that has bubbled up in both the House and Senate, noting, “this creates a mechanism where defense spending could be increased quite significantly without any offsets. It is my strongly held view that while we need to increase defense spending, for the sake of the fiscal solvency of our government and our long-term viability of the nation we need to reign in spending.”
Toomey said given the national security needs, he would “reluctantly” support the increase to the overseas contingency operations account.
The reluctance from Toomey reflected the internal debate that drove the House Budget Committee into the late hours Wednesday. The House tried to appease its 70-strong defense hawk members by adding $94 billion into OCO, which is sequester-immune.
It tried to appease its deficit hawks by adding a provision that members would have to find offsets for $20 billion of the OCO money. But the move left neither faction satisfied. Defense hawks revolted against the $20 billion offset requirement, saying it would threaten needed defense funding, and deficit hawks revolted because of what they see as out-of-control growth and expansion of the OCO fund, saying it has become a way for the Department of Defense and Congress to circumvent defense spending limits.
By Thursday, the bill was pushed out of committee without addressing this division, sending it to the full House floor to be hashed out next week. Speaker John Boehner has already promised to side with the defense hawks, and put in “additional resources to protect our national security.”
Both bills are expected to get to the floor in the next week and are scheduled to go to a final vote by April 15.
Other defense-related amendments included one introduced by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., that would approve funds for Naval Station Norfolk and other military bases around the country to bolster its infrastructure against the security risks that climate change pose to their installations; and an amendment by Graham that would bolster security spending at diplomatic facilities.
“The main Norfolk road into the largest Naval Base in the world in 2040 will be inundated by daily tides,” Kaine said.
