Skip to content

Two Things We Learned this Week

1. Republicans are on a collision course over DoD spending: The long-brewing squabble between GOP defense hawks and fiscal hawks over defense spending is coming to a head, with the House Budget Committee planning to move a budget resolution that sets base defense spending next fiscal year $35 billion below what the Pentagon requested. But the defense hawks are lobbying furiously to avoid that outcome, and Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain (R-AZ) is even vowing to personally oppose a budget resolution that doesn’t increase military spending above what’s allowed under the Budget Control Act of 2011. Sequester? What sequester?

And on the House side, Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-TX) is asking the House Budget Committee to boost defense spending, which would bust the BCA caps by more than $50 billion. In a letter he plans to send to the Budget panel today, Thornberry will seek $577 billion in defense spending for the House’s budget resolution and argue that “the lowest acceptable level is $566 billion, the amount identified for 2016 in last year’s House budget,” the aide said.

Thornberry’s request of $577 billion is the amount that was projected for the Pentagon in FY2016 before the 2011 Budget Control Act was approved and sequestration took effect. It’s higher than President Barack Obama’s FY2016 request of $561 billion, which includes base Pentagon funding as well as other spending considered part of the “national security” budget. The GOP aide said that Thornberry’s letter is signed by 31 of the 36 Republicans on the Armed Services panel.

2. Government shutdowns are still a thing: Shortly after the November midterm elections that gave Republicans control of the Senate, then-incoming Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “We will not be shutting the government down.” Now here we are, just three months later – with the Department of Homeland Security set to run out of funds at midnight. And House and Senate leaders remain at an impasse over whether to pass a “clean” DHS spending bill or continue pushing to tie DHS funding to the president’s executive order on immigration. 

House leaders are now looking at staving off a shutdown by passing a three-week continuing spending resolution for DHS. Read more here.

Source: Politico