As the House Armed Services Committee prepares to roll out the first subcommittee markups of the National Defense Authorization Act later this afternoon, HASC chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) said the NDAA will contain a “substantial amount” of acquisition reform, he told reporters on April 21.
Thornberry unveiled his acquisition reform legislation at the end of March and has since been receiving feedback on how to adjust the language before its inclusion into the defense authorization bill. The reform legislation can’t fix everything, he said, “but generally I feel pretty good that we’re on a good track and we are making things somewhat better.”
Thornberry met with the Pentagon’s top acquisition official Frank Kendall this morning, he said.
“He liked what we did, he had some suggestions, so we’re going back and forth to try to get them right,” he said. He declined to comment on specific language that would be included in the upcoming defense authorization act.
The House in March passed a budget proposal that adds $38 billion in funding to the wartime spending budget to keep the defense base budget under Budget Control Act caps but meet the president’s budget request. It set the base budget at $523 billion and increases Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) spending to $96 billion.
The NDAA will lay out what specific programs have been moved from the base budget to OCO, Thornberry said. Certain types of accounts, such as operations and maintenance, make more sense to be funded by OCO dollars, where others like long-term research and development will likely stay in the base budget.
“I’m not too wrapped up on the label on the account,” he said. The Senate Armed Services Committee and House Appropriations Committee “are all on the same page” on how to deal with sequestration, and he is confident the latter will approve the increased OCO funding. “What I am very focused on is that we have adequate funding as the military leadership has defined it.”
Thornberry remained mum on what changes to expect in the NDAA language, including whether HASC would add funding–as it has in the past–for the A-10 Warthog that the Air Force wants to retire. “I suspect, somewhere along the way, the A-10 will come up in our subcommittee or full committee mark,” he said.