GOP fails in early push for spending parity

A GOP proposal to require parity between defense and non-defense spending in fiscal year 2022 has failed in the Senate.

The proposal, offered by Sens. Richard Shelby (R-AL) and Jim Inhofe (R-OK) as an amendment to a bill aimed at countering China's economic and foreign policy ambitions, needed 60 votes to pass, but failed 44-53.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) released a statement yesterday opposing Shelby and Inhofe's amendment.

"Providing a dollar to the Defense Department for every dollar of non-defense spending is simply arbitrary, and would lead to absurd results," Leahy said. "Under this amendment, if we pass an infrastructure bill through reconciliation providing $2 trillion dollars to fix our roads and bridges and build out broadband, we would then have to provide $2 trillion dollars for defense, nearly tripling that budget."

Shelby and Inhofe, the ranking Republicans on the Senate Appropriations and Armed Services committees, said in a joint statement yesterday "the best deterrent to Chinese ambition and aggression is a strong and feared American military."

The Biden administration, meanwhile, has set a $715 billion topline for the Pentagon and $753 billion in total defense spending. Republicans say Biden's request is too small.

"His priorities are out of order -- a strong military underpins everything else we do to push back on China," Shelby and Inhofe said. "That is why our amendment provides dollar-for-dollar parity in increases between defense and non-defense spending. We encourage our Democratic colleagues to join us in this effort for a whole-of-government approach to Chinese aggression. In light of the threat China poses, it's hard to imagine anything that should garner more bipartisan support in the United States Senate."

The "parity principle" was a key feature in a decade of spending negotiations following the 2011 Budget Control Act. But the BCA has expired and now Congress is without a framework to help force a compromise on spending, meaning the partisan debate will likely drag past the Oct. 1 start of FY-22 and possibly into the next calendar year, necessitating the need for a stopgap continuing resolution.