Congress is aiming to pass a short-term resolution this week to give it time to craft a longer term budget agreement that avoids automatic spending cuts, known as sequestration, but any budget deal shouldn’t hold increases in defense appropriations hostage to an equal ramp up in domestic funding, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said over the weekend.
“Now I want to take the politics out and I want to make the policy in,” McCarthy said last Saturday. “But when you sit with both parties, one says it has to be equal, a dollar for military and a dollar for domestic,” he said, referring to demands from Democrats that any budget deal made to avoid sequestration has to apply equally to defense and domestic spending.
“You should fund your military with what you need to accomplish to protect you from the threats,” McCarthy said at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California. “That’s what you should decide the number upon.”
The federal government is currently operating under a continuing resolution (CR) until that provides funding at prior fiscal year levels until Dec. 8. On Dec. 2, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen introduced a two-week CR to prevent a government shutdown at the end of this week and to give Congress more time for budget negotiations. The House Rules Committee is scheduled to consider the new CR Dec. 5. The full House and Senate are both expected to pass the measure sometime this week.
The government’s fiscal year 2018 began on Oct. 1. With a CR in place, the government can operate but no new programs can get underway and program offices keep funds in reserve, typically leading to a slowdown in contracting activity.
McCarthy said neither party wants to keep operating under a CR.
“You don’t have the flexibility” with a CR, he said. “In a world where new technology matters, you don’t have the ability to make those changes when the world is changing so fast.”
McCarthy said that the upcoming negotiations over the federal budget could lead from the two-week CR to a budget “cap agreement that would allow us to finish out appropriations.” He added that, “if we’re able to put that pressure, get the agreement, not only this year, but you’ll have next year as well. And we’ll get out of this mess hopefully once and for all and be able to make the decisions much more on policy than on politics.”
The House and Senate have until mid-January to reach a budget agreement that avoids sequestration, which is implemented by caps in the Budget Control Act of 2011.
Gen. David Goldfein, chief of staff of the Air Force, who was part of a panel with McCarthy to discuss the U.S. Defense Industrial Base, said “we actually haven’t completely recovered from the last sequester,” adding that if the automatic budget cuts lop $10 billion from the Air Force budget, it has significant ramifications.
Goldfein said that squadrons that aren’t involved in, or preparing for, combat operations don’t fly and that hiring of civilians stops. And there are ripple effects from these actions, he said.
Everyone who “touches” the aircraft to keep them ready and flying is affected, he said, adding “all of those qualifications go away.”
Halting the hiring of civilians doesn’t stop them from retiring so the workforce shrinks, which impacts the work done by civilians in depot facilities, Goldfein said.
“If we don’t get past sequester in its current form, the United States Air Force, and I speak now for all the services, we will have to find $15 billion in a single year,” Goldfein said. “We sometimes talk of no fly zones. If you want to see a no fly zone, go to any base that’s not either preparing for or executing combat operations. You will see no more flying.”
Goldfein said that if the government can’t get beyond sequester is it is currently structured, “we’re going to potentially break this force.”