Defense budget bill in limbo over funding cut fight

WASHINGTON—In a fast-paced world with ever-increasing technological innovations, virtual attacks are becoming more common. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said last week the military cannot prioritize certain national security threats over others: “We don’t have the option. We have to do it all.”

But the national defense budget now faces the challenge of meeting the complex array of global security threats with insufficient funds. “Defense spending has been cut, when you count the effects of inflation, 21 percent in the last four years,” said Thornberry, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, at a Tuesday discussion hosted by centrist think tank The Atlantic Council.

Congress recently passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which Thornberry proposed with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The House passed the bill in May and the Senate passed it Thursday, with the support of fiscally conservative Republicans and some Democrats.

Congress has passed the bill for 53 years in a row, making it one of the few remaining bills able to garner a bipartisan consensus. The latest version designates $612 billion next year for the Department of Defense and for the Department of Energy’s national security programs. Funding would go to weapons, research and development, construction, maintenance, improvements to the Armed Forces retirement system, counter-drug activities, and other similar expenses.

“We have a choice right now to meet the lower ragged edge of what it takes to defend the country or to play politics and end up with significantly less than is required. And I think this choice is going to say a lot about what the next 70 years looks like,” Thornberry said. He emphasized replacing nuclear weapons and said delivery systems should be a major priority for the next president and for congress.

But the White House said the defense bill, which sidesteps defense budget caps with a $38 billion boost for the Overseas Contingency Operations war fund, “fails to provide a stable, multi-year budget on which defense planning and fiscal policy are based.”

The defense bill is related to a Department of Defense (DoD) appropriations bill, and the president plans to veto both. The defense authorization bill has enough Senate votes to overturn a presidential veto, but not in the House.

“We need to work this out in the legislative branch,” Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., told me Tuesday.

Even though the bills provide funding the White House previously requested, President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats say they will not accept sequestration cuts of non-defense funding that the two bills could cause. Instead, they want a long-term budget plan that increases both defense and non-defense spending.

Congress intentionally included sequestration budget cuts for federal agencies in the Budget Control Act to push agreement on a deficit reduction plan, but couldn’t reach an agreement. Cuts began in March, with the U.S. military budget set to lose $500 million over the next decade.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that short-term budget cuts are not sustainable: “If confronted with sequester-level budgets and continued obstacles to reform, I don’t believe we can simply keep making incremental cuts while maintaining the same set of budgets.”