The House and Senate on Tuesday unveiled the reconciled version of the fiscal year 2016 defense authorization bill, which retains a $38.3 billion boost to wartime funding to circumvent mandatory spending caps.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) said he planned to file the conference report this afternoon, with a House vote slated for Thursday.
The agreement authorizes $515 billion for the defense base budget and $89.2 billion for Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) funding.
HASC’s ranking Democrat, Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said he and most Democrat conferees declined to sign the conference report because it boosts OCO funding instead of finding a budget solution that lowers the Budget Control Act caps.
“It’s really the OCO funding that’s left in the bill that is the fly in the ointment,” he said during a joint press conference with Thornberry, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) and SASC Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-R.I.).
Smith also noted concerns about blocking certain cost cutting measures endorsed by the services, such as the retirement of the A-10 and a layup of the Navy’s cruisers.
Only one House Democrat and two Senate Democrats—Sens. Tim Kaine (Va.) and Joe Donnelly (Ind.)—signed the report, senior staff from the House and Senate Armed Services Committees said.
On acquisition reform, the conference bill moves milestone decision authority from the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) to the service acquisition executive for all new programs. The legislation will also require the service chiefs to sign off on any program when there is a cost overrun. However, if a program experiences cost growth that violates the Nunn–McCurdy Amendment, the undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics can “jerk back” the program into OSD’s control, Thornberry said.
“We think one of the biggest problems in the past has been that no one has been held accountable for cost overruns,” McCain said.
The bill also maintains the Senate’s $11.398 billion cost cap for the second Ford-class aircraft carrier, the USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79) and all subsequent carriers— a $100 million decrease from the current cap.