By Emelie Rutherford
A key House panel could cut President Barack Obama’s Pentagon budget proposal by up to 2 percent, Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) said yesterday.
Dicks said the House Appropriations Committee (HAC) could give the defense subcommittee (HAC-D), which he chairs, a smaller allocation than White House’s fiscal year 2011 defense request, which includes $708.3 billion for the Pentagon base budget and war funding.
“It would not shock me if that were the case,” he told Defense Daily.
Dicks said he feels “personally” defense spending could be curtailed, if lawmakers are going to control domestic spending and if the drawdown of troops and contractors in Iraq continues. The reality, considering the state of the U.S. economy, is that Pentagon spending likely will be tightened, he said.
“We need to,” he said.
The Obama administration’s defense proposal could be trimmed “1 to 2 percent at the margin,” Dicks said.
Still, nothing is official and the 12 HAC subcommittees have not yet received their allocated budget amounts from the full panel for the appropriation bills for FY ’11, which will start Oct. 1. It is not clear on Capitol Hill if a defense appropriations bill will emerge in the House before lawmakers leave Washington for the August recess.
Dicks has been warning of tough budget deliberations over the FY ’11 defense appropriations bill.
“With the austerity that colors the rest of our appropriations work this year, and with a serious commitment to reduce the deficit, I cannot believe defense will be held harmless,” he said in prepared remarks at the June 4 Showcase for Commerce defense-industry gathering in Johnstown, Pa.
“In the allocation our subcommittee receives, we could see a substantial reduction from the president’s budget request, which obviously complicates our task but which is nevertheless a necessary exercise,” he said. “Ultimately, if we are unable to constrain spending at some point, that itself will be a threat to our national security. So we will do the best we can in a way that preserves what is–and has been–a consensus in Congress to provide the best defense of this nation (Defense Daily, June 7) .”
HAC Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) has been busy dealing with the delayed FY ’10 war-funding supplemental and economic-relief bills.
The Senate passed a spending bill on May 27 with $33.5 billion in war spending and additional funding for items including the Gulf of Mexico oil spill; the full HAC, though, canceled its markup of the supplemental that had been planned for the same day. Obey told Politico this week he will not turn to supplemental before the economic-relief measure, and is looking to add additional domestic spending to the war measure.
HAC Ranking Member Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) accused Democrats yesterday of manipulating the war-and Gulf-funding bill “to carry billions in extraneous spending for their election-year priorities.”
While no FY ’11 defense appropriations bills have emerged yet on Capitol Hill, the FY ’11 defense authorization measure, which sets policy, is further along. The House passed its version on May 28, the same day the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) unveiled its proposal.
SASC Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) reiterated yesterday his hope that the full Senate will take up the committee-passed bill this month, before Congress’ Fourth of July recess in three weeks. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) talked to Democrats during a lunch meeting yesterday about acting soon on “three or four” bills including the defense authorization measure.
“It’s clearly high up on (Reid’s) radar,” Levin said.
If the Senate doesn’t take it up in June, the SASC chairman said he is “very confident it will happen in July.”
A House-Senate conference committee may not craft a final bill to send to the White House until later, he said.