McCain to offer amendment to boost defense spending

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-AZ) said today he plans to offer an amendment to the fiscal year 2017 defense authorization bill to increase total defense spending by $18 billion when the legislation reaches the floor next week.

When advancing the bill through committee, McCain did not support a plan championed by House authorizers and appropriators to shift $18 billion from the Pentagon's overseas contingency operations to its base budget to pay for increases in weapon systems and military end strength. The OCO-to-base funding shift would be made, however, in the hopes that a new presidential administration would authorize emergency supplemental spending before the OCO account runs dry next April. The account is the primary source of funding for U.S. operations in the Middle East and elsewhere.

The bill that came out of McCain's committee and is due to reach the Senate floor next week sticks to the president's budget request.

Still, McCain plans to offer his own amendment to the bill to raise total defense spending without transferring OCO funds.

"The Senate [bill], at present, conforms to last year's budget agreement. But when the legislation comes to the floor next week, I will offer an amendment to increase defense spending above the current spending caps, reverse short-sighted cuts to modernization, restore military readiness, and give our servicemembers the support they need and deserve," he said during a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

"I do not know whether or not this amendment will succeed," he continued. "But the Senate must have this debate. And senators must choose a side."

McCain, who in the past has criticized OCO budget maneuvers, said he and his colleagues in the House had the same objective.

"The president's defense budget request follows the Bipartisan Budget Agreement, which is $17 billion less than what the Department of Defense planned for last year," he said. "My friends in the House and I share the same goal of restoring these arbitrary cuts to military capability and capacity. The House has adopted one approach. The Senate has adopted a different path to reach the same objective."

In the end, McCain said, Congress must repeal the 2011 Budget Control Act and the spending caps that forced lawmakers to tie themselves into fiscal knots on an annual basis.

"For the past five years, the Budget Control Act has imposed arbitrary caps on defense spending. This year's defense budget is more than $150 billion less than fiscal year 2011 and the world has only grown more complex and dangerous over the past five years, not less so," he said. "Despite periodic relief from these budget caps, including the Bipartisan Budget Act of last year, each of our military services remains underfunded, undersized, and unready to meet current and future threats."

AT&L cut defended

McCain also defended a provision in the Senate authorization bill that seeks to eliminate the post of under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics (AT&L), which Defense Secretary Ash Carter recently criticized.

AT&L "has grown too big, tries to do too much, and is too focused on compliance at the expense of innovation," he said. "That is why the [bill] seeks to divide AT&L's duties between two offices: a new under secretary of defense for research and engineering and an empowered and renamed under secretary of management and support, which was congressionally mandated two years ago."

McCain praised the bill as a whole and, using a term popularized by presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, said: "We're gonna make America great again and it's gonna be huge."