Work on the new government-funding bill was stalled in the Senate Tuesday by Republican senators who said they needed more time to review the measure a Democrat-run panel released late Monday night.
At issue is a “continuing resolution” (CR) funding most of the government during the second half of fiscal year 2013 near FY ’12 funding levels. The legislation has attached to it full-blown appropriations bills for several agencies, including the Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security, and NASA.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) argued her panel’s CR is similar to one the House passed last week, though the Senate version adds three more appropriations bills not in the House version–for Homeland Security, Commerce-Justice-Science, and Agriculture.
Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), though, argued Tuesday they could not be expected to start debating the massive federal budget bill after receiving it from the SAC after 9 p.m. Monday.
Coburn placed a hold on the bill, prompting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) late Tuesday to file a cloture motion, a procedural move to allow the Senate to proceed to the bill. A cloture vote is scheduled for Thursday. Yet Coburn potentially could relent and allow the Senate to start debating and amending the CR Wednesday.
McCain, who until recently was ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, argued Tuesday the SAC’s CR contains “egregious pork-barrel spending.”
“There are provisions in this CR that directly were prohibited, prohibited in the defense authorization bill,” he said about the Pentagon policy-setting legislation he helped craft. For example, McCain said the SAC’s CR contains funding for the U.S. military in Guam, even though the FY ’13 defense authorization bill says the administration must first craft a new strategy for shifting troops to the island before spending such funds.
Senate Democrats were clearly angry they could not start debate Tuesday on the CR, which would replace another such resolution that expires March 27.
“We need to move this bill,” Mikulski said.
SAC members and aides said the fiscal year 2013 defense appropriations bill embedded in the CR is nearly identical to the House-passed one. The only difference is the House version includes a 0.109 percent reduction to “security” funding, while the Senate version set that reduction at 0.092 percent, according to SAC staff. Thus, the SAC’s bill includes a $517.7 billion base defense budget, while the House version calls for $517.6 billion.
Both the SAC and House bills include the same breakdown for the major defense budget accounts: $10.4 billion in additional operation and maintenance funding compared to the FY ’12 levels, which is offset with reductions of $4.2 billion to procurement and $2.5 billion to research and development funding. House and Senate appropriators already met and agreed on the final defense bill for the fiscal year that started last Oct. 1.
The House and SAC measures aim to help the Pentagon better manage the new “sequestration” budget cuts, by shifting around funding and allowing the Pentagon to reprogram monies. Sequestration is the $1.2 trillion decade-long budget reduction that started March 1. It is slated to tap more than $40 billion from Pentagon spending until Sept. 30.
President Barack Obama is expected to sign a final CR the House and Senate agree to this month. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued statements of administration policy–on the SAC version Tuesday and House version last week–that lacked any veto threat, even though both measures factor in the sequestration cuts that Obama opposes. The White House statement on Tuesday lauds the SAC’s CR, saying it “improves upon” the House version “by strengthening funding for transportation infrastructure, manufacturing, research and development, early childhood programs, and housing programs.”
“Further, the administration strongly supports inclusion of several full-year appropriations bills, which will improve the ability to efficiently allocate funding to key investments, including those that support science and innovation, nutrition, cybersecurity, community safety, and national defense,” OMB says about the SAC’s measure.