House appropriators pass defense spending bill

By Tony Bertuca / July 14, 2020 at 3:50 PM

The House Appropriations Committee voted 30-22 today to pass a fiscal year 2021 defense spending bill likely to draw veto threats from the White House.

Republicans on the committee said they could not support the $694.6 billion spending bill in its current form, noting the likelihood of a showdown with President Trump over the bill's inclusion of several provisions they deem problematic.

For instance, the committee voted in favor of two amendments offered by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) that would end war authorizations Congress passed in 2001 and 2002.

Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX), the committee's ranking member, said repealing the authorization for use of military force is a "poison pill" that could derail the entire bill.

Lee also successfully included an amendment that would block the president from going to war with Iran.

Additionally, the bill contains language that would prohibit spending to construct a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

The bill would also cut the Pentagon's budgetary reprogramming authority from a requested $9.5 billion to $1.9 billion in response to the Trump administration's transferring of defense funds to build a border wall without congressional consent.

House Appropriations defense subcommittee Chairman Pete Visclosky (D-IN) criticized the Defense Department for reprogramming billions toward the wall and then asking Congress to increase its reprogramming authority and boost its overall budget in the coming years by an annual 3% to 5%.

"In recent years, department leadership has not missed an opportunity to claim that a 3% to 5% annual real growth in the defense budget is necessary to support the National Defense Strategy," he said. "But at the same time, those same leaders facilitated the transfer of nearly $10 billion to non-defense activities not enumerated within the National Defense Strategy."

"And while this was happening, they also have had the temerity to repeatedly request more flexibility from Congress for executing their budget and for reprogramming authorities," Visclosky continued. "The sense of entitlement in these actions is galling, and I hope that at some point the department will have the leadership in place who recognize[s] Congress' constitutional prerogative and restore trust to the appropriations process."

The bill also provides $1 million to the Army to rename military facilities named for Confederate leaders. Trump has said he would veto any legislation requiring the current names of military facilities to be changed.

Along with setting the stage for conflict with the White House, the bill's more controversial measures are also likely to run into opposition from the GOP-led Senate, prompting several analysts to predict Congress will be unable to pass an FY-21 appropriations package by Oct. 1. If that happens, the federal government would operate under a continuing resolution likely to last through the November election.

Senate appropriators, meanwhile, have yet to schedule the mark-up of their defense spending bill.

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