House lawmakers prepare to debate upcoming defense bill

The House Armed Services Committee will begin consideration of the fiscal year 2019 defense authorization bill April 26, with a full committee mark-up scheduled for May 9, according to a schedule released today.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-TX) and Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the committee's ranking Democrat, have also sent a "views and estimates" letter to the House Budget Committee urging a resolution that honors the Bipartisan Budget Agreement reached in February by Congress.

The agreement calls for $716 billion in national defense spending, an increase of $85 billion above the cap mandated by the 2011 Budget Control Act. The agreement also includes an additional $68 billion above the BCA cap for non-defense spending.

The first half of the agreement, which approved an additional $85 billion for defense and $63 billion for non-defense in FY-18, was signed into law last week.

Now, Thornberry and Smith write, Congress in FY-19 must "follow the fiscal cycle through to conclusion by properly providing appropriations in a timely manner for the Department to execute these funds effectively."

Smith, however, voiced concern in a separate letter that the White House demonstrated it does not want to honor bipartisan deal when it submitted an FY-19 budget that cuts non-defense spending.

"Therefore, the budget resolution must deviate from the president's budget request and support BBA funding levels for FY 2019 for both defense and [non-defense] categories of the discretionary budget," Smith writes. "The BBA increase to the defense budget is justifiable in light of national security challenges, but enabling the achievement of defense priorities alone is insufficient."

Smith's letter also points out that BCA spending caps are set to return beginning in FY-20. The BCA caps do not expire until FY-21.

Meanwhile, Thornberry, who helped GOP defense hawks as they worked for months to engineer a two-year increase in defense spending, signaled at a March 20 hearing he is prepared to take the fight into FY-20 and beyond.

"It would be a mistake for any of us to leave the impression that this cap agreement and the money that flows from it fixes all our problems," he said. "It does not."