The House rejected last night a temporary seven-week federal budget for the new fiscal year that would cut Pentagon spending below current levels.
Because Congress has passed none of the 12 federal appropriations bills for fiscal year 2012, which starts Oct. 1, the Republican-led House debated an unsuccessful continuing resolution (CR) that that would run until Nov. 18 and trim funding for the Pentagon and most federal agencies by 1.4 percent below the present FY ’11 levels. The measure, if passed, would have been weighed by the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats who wanted to make non-Pentagon-related changes.
The spending reductions in the House’s CR were intended to jibe with spending caps set in the Budget Control Act of 2011 that President Barack Obama signed on Aug. 2.
For the base defense budget, the cut in the CR would mean a $7.4 billion reduction from the current $532 billion total. War funding, dubbed Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO), in the CR would be set at $118 billion, which is the amount in the House-passed FY ’12 defense appropriations bill and less than the $157 billion in FY ’11.
The House Appropriations Committee said the extra war funding would cover “defense survival equipment,” including Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles and body armor for deployed troops.
When such a CR is in place, the Pentagon cannot enter into contracts to start new programs.
If the House had passed the CR, it would have gone to the Senate, where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) talked about making changes related to natural-disaster funding but not the defense budget
Also on Capitol Hill yesterday, the Senate Armed Services Committee approved the nomination of Ashton Carter–the current the under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics–to be deputy defense secretary. If the full Senate confirms Carter, he will replace the outgoing deputy, William Lynn, who announced his pending departure in July, shortly after former defense secretary Robert Gates retired.