The chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Monday he may be open to boosting the fiscal year 2025 defense topline above the one percent spending cap from last year’s debt limit deal if Congress is unable to pass the pending supplemental with foreign aid and funds to replenish the Pentagon’s weapon stockpiles.
“Without a supplemental we’re in, sort of, unknown [territory]. Just keeping our Defense Department operating efficiently [and] effectively would be potentially jeopardized. So, yes, we have to think of all different tools,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the SASC chair, told reporters during a Defense Writers Group discussion.
Ahead of the Pentagon’s rollout last week of its $849.8 billion FY ‘25 budget request, which complies with the spending cap set by last year’s Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA), a senior defense official told reporters the slight spending increase “is not enough to cover inflation” and said the department faces an uncertain funding outlook as final FY ‘24 appropriations and billions of dollars in the foreign aid supplemental remain pending before Congress (Defense Daily, March 11).
The official noted DoD had originally projected an $860 billion topline for FY ‘25 prior to the debt limit deal, which locked in a one percent increase in FY ‘25 for defense and non-defense toplines.
“This is directly a result of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 where our Republican colleagues, particularly in the House, held us up, literally. We couldn’t get a debt ceiling increase unless we agreed to the numbers that they were talking about. And now we’re under that legislation, we’re locked into this [topline] number,” Reed told reporters on Monday. “But as you know, every budget is a work in progress. And we’re going to look very carefully at what the services need. We’re particularly waiting for their unfunded priorities lists, so we can take a look at them. And then, we’re going to make judgements, some of them independent of the administration’s proposal.”
“It was really the quid pro quo for saving the country from an economic collapse if we hadn’t increased the debt ceiling. And now it’s somewhat ironic that many of the folks that were insisting on that are now saying that the [spending caps] are terrible,” Reed added.
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said last week that, while the Pentagon complied with the FRA’s spending cap, the “defense topline number fails to keep pace with inflation and our adversaries.”
Reed’s comments on potentially looking at a defense topline boost if Congress is unable to pass the pending supplemental with foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan arrives as progress on the spending package has stalled out since the Senate passed its own bill more than a month ago (Defense Daily, Feb. 13).
“We have to pass the supplemental legislation. We have to give [Ukraine] literally the weapons, the artillery, the ammunition to do the job,” Reed said. “The Ukrainians have to have the confidence that they’re going to have fairly consistent financial and military support, so they can design [their] strategy. It’s one thing to be talking about holding a line and making an offensive operation. But if the question is, ‘Will we have any ammunition to do that,’ that defeats a lot of your planning.
The Senate’s $95.3 billion foreign aid bill includes $19.9 billion in further funding to replenish stockpiles of U.S. equipment sent to Ukraine, with Reed adding that not passing the supplemental would have a “significant” impact on the Pentagon.
“One of the things about the supplemental is that the vast majority of the money is going to American companies to produce American equipment that will go to our military, the newest possible equipment, to replace that equipment that has been transferred to the Ukrainians. So, the supplemental if we don’t pass it, is not only going to disadvantage our military forces, it’s [also] going to disadvantage our military industrial base. So that’s why we’ve got to get it done,” Reed said.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has yet to bring the Senate’s bill up for consideration on the House floor, while Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) said recently it’s likely that Johnson won’t bring up a foreign aid supplemental until Congress completes work on final FY ‘24 appropriations legislation (Defense Daily, March 7).
Reed said that any Ukraine aid-related funding included in the final FY ‘24 defense appropriations bill, set to be unveiled this week ahead of the March 22 deadline, would provide “some relief” to the ongoing delay in passing the supplemental but would not be “sufficient.”
“I think, yes, any resources will help. But we’ve got to get the supplemental done,” Reed said, and also addressed calls from some Republicans to provide further assistance for Kyiv in the form of loans. “Again, we have to get this done. And if we have to resort to, sort of, calling [it] something else, well, we might have to do that.”
The Pentagon last week announced a new $300 million weapons aid package for Ukraine, the U.S.’ first since late December, funded with cost savings from previous contracts the department had negotiated to replenish its weapons stockpiles (Defense Daily, March 12).
“I think what last week demonstrated was ingenuity and creativity, which only lasts so long,” Reed told reporters on Monday.