The White House said Monday the defense appropriations bill the House will debate this week could be subject to a presidential veto because it adheres to a Republican budget plan President Barack Obama opposes.
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The House Rules Committee, meanwhile, cleared the way on Monday night for the fiscal year 2014 Pentagon funding legislation to be debated on the House floor. The panel approved a “structured” rule for debate by the full chamber. The rule breaks with recent tradition and only allows House members to debate a pre-determined group of amendments–instead of any amendments lawmakers proposed by last week’s deadline.
The defense appropriations bill the House Appropriations Committee approved June 12 would set the Pentagon’s base budget at $512.5 billion for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. It proposes trimming $3.4 billion from the Pentagon’s proposal, including a research-and-development cut of $1.1 billion and weapons-procurement reduction of $750 million (Defense Daily, June 13).
Obama’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a Statement of Administration Policy (OMB) early Monday night saying the bill–crafted by the Republican-controlled House–would “hurt our economy and require draconian cuts to middle-class priorities.”
That’s because it adheres to the House GOP budget resolution Obama opposes, which calls for ending the $500 billion in longterm “sequestration” budget cuts to the defense budget by cutting domestic programs the president and many Democrats support. The OMB’s SAP notes how Republicans and Democrats in Congress have not yet met to reconcile the vastly different budget resolutions the GOP-led House and Democrat-led Senate passed earlier this year.
“Prior to consideration of appropriations bills the Congress should complete an appropriate framework for all the appropriations bills,” the official statement says. “Unless this bill passes the Congress in the context of an overall budget framework that supports our recovery and enables sufficient investments in education, infrastructure, innovation and national security for our economy to compete in the future, the president’s senior advisors would recommend that he veto (the HAC-approved defense appropriations bill) and any other legislation that implements the House Republican Budget framework.”
The SAP says the Obama administration “strongly objects” to unrequested funding in the bill for the Pentagon’s Overseas Contingency Operations budget for war-related funding, along with a reduction of Obama’s request for the base Pentagon budget.
It cites qualms with additional provisions in the HAC-approved bill, including “billions of dollars provided for items (the Department of Defense) DoD did not request and does not need.” That includes funding for light-utility helicopters, Humvees for the National Guard, and modernizing seven Navy cruisers and two amphibious ships. It says the administration is concerned the bill makes spending on “these and other unnecessary items statutorily required, diverting scarce resources from more important defense programs and limiting the (defense) secretary’s flexibility to manage the (Defenes) Department efficiently.”
It further objects to funding in the bill for C-130 modernization as well as cuts to the Pentagon’s proposed funding for areas including advanced-innovation technologies, the Joint Urgent Operational Needs Fund, and the Defense Acquisition Workforce Development Fund.
The House Rules Committee, meanwhile, approved a structured rule late Monday dictating how the full House bill debate the defense appropriations bill this week. It allows debate on a controversial proposal by Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), which delayed the bill’s consideration, related to the National Security Agency’s surveillance activities.