CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
May 18, 2012 – 10:33 p.m.
Chambers Stake Claims on Defense
By Frank Oliveri, CQ Staff
With passage of the fiscal 2013 defense policy bill last week, House Republicans offered a counterargument to the Obama administration’s new defense strategy that reflects strong differences, but also leverages significant areas of agreement with the Democrat-dominated Senate Armed Services panel.
Indeed, the old axiom on Armed Services is that the two sides often will agree on more than 95 percent of the issues confronting the committee. But the remaining 5 percent tends to draw all the attention. The same is true again this year.
House GOP strategists insist that while they may not win many of the battles with the Obama administration and Senate Democrats they chose to exploit in the $642.5 billion bill (
“When we build the mark, we are already looking toward the Senate and conference,” one senior GOP aide said. “It is not one battle at a time; it’s a campaign we are trying to pull together.”
For its part, the administration has issued a broad veto threat should the bill undercut the president’s new defense strategy or deficit reduction laws. A series of other veto threats were issued on individual concerns GOP lawmakers hope to engage in conference.
Senate Armed Services begins marking up its version of the defense authorization bill on Tuesday.
Exploiting Agreement
The GOP campaign starts with confronting the administration on issues where the Armed Services panels in both chambers appear to agree: blocking proposed cuts to the Air National Guard; blocking proposed fee increases on working military retirees’ health care; and blunting efforts by the administration to retire ships and slow the purchase of newer vessels, among others.
“I really think there is more agreement in other areas with the Senate,” said
The House also included a provision in the defense policy bill that would block a sequester, which, in practical terms, achieves nothing, but provides a venue in which to address sequester in a germane way later in the year, a senior GOP aide explained.
Lawmakers almost universally agree that an across-the-board cut to defense — as required under the deficit reduction law (PL 112-25) — would cause havoc in the defense bill and must be averted, although it appears there is no current strategy to do so.
GOP aides also scoff at the contention that the topline set in the House-passed bill is too far beyond the deficit control law caps, and would become a big problem with Senate Democrats. They note that the Obama administration’s request also exceeded the budget caps, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
But Senate Democratic aides stress that Democrats intend to hew closely to the deficit reduction law budget caps.
Chambers Stake Claims on Defense
A senior Republican aide, who was deeply involved in planning the GOP strategy, said the bill would reduce the $490 billion in planned reductions to future defense plans — as required by the deficit reduction law — by about $200 billion over 10 years.
Republicans have been saying for months that while defense represents half of the discretionary budget, it accounts for only a fifth of the overall budget, including mandatory spending, yet it has accounted for half of the deficit savings achieved to date.
“I don’t think we are going backwards; we are going forward,” Forbes said. “I think we went back when we went to sequestration. This is a matter of rebalancing our defense priorities.”
Further, GOP defense policy aides have noted that the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, which has worked closely with defense authorizers in shaping its defense draft spending bill, likely will work out the differences in conference with Senate Defense appropriators “because we all see the world the same way on those issues,” the GOP aide noted.
Indeed, several GOP defense experts agreed that on issues related to defense spending, their best friends in Congress, these days, are their Democratic counterparts on the defense panels.
Heavier Lifts
But there will be several elements to the House-passed defense authorization bill that likely will not survive conference with the Senate, aides from both parties said.
The House, for example, sought to pick a fight over Russia. One provision that was adopted on the floor would delay the implementation of the New START agreement by preventing any reductions to the nuclear arsenal until the Defense secretary reports on Russia’s compliance with the treaty.
Another provision that was adopted on a party-line vote would cut off strategic aid to Russia if it continues to aid Syria in putting down a popular uprising. The amendment angered Democrats because the longstanding assistance helps Moscow safeguard its nuclear weapons-making materials.
“The language on Russia is particularly troubling,” said
The House included several expensive additions to the defense bill that, according to the CBO, would add more than $50 billion to the Defense Department’s budget through 2017. Those include a new missile defense site on the East Coast of the United States and a facility that, among other things, would produce nuclear triggers.
But GOP strategists argue that these are important conversation-starters.
Chambers Stake Claims on Defense
“When you talk about the East Coast site, it’s about getting the debate going on the European Phased Adaptive Approach,” the aide said. “People are slowly coming to the realization that that approach has its limitations, and it is very expensive, too.”
The strategy, which is an Obama administration adaptation of a George W. Bush plan, is based on deploying a series of increasingly capable interceptors based on existing defenses, while continuing to develop new technologies.
Similarly, lawmakers hope to continue to force a debate on energy. The House bill includes provisions that would under cut administration policies encouraging the development of alternative-fuel technology.
These provisions too will trigger strong pushback from the Senate because Democrats believe they “undermine our national security,” Smith said. “Our nation must decrease, if not eliminate, its reliance on imported fuels and maintain our leadership in this area.
“I look forward to reviewing the Senate’s version of this bill and working with my colleagues here in the House to make sure we send the president a final bill” he can sign, Smith added.