Last week was a bit of a mixed one up in DC. For what feels like the fiftieth time in recent years, Congress again failed to consider detailed funding bills for the government and instead resorted to a short-term “continuing resolution.” As any longtime readers of this column will know too well by now, continuing resolutions just keep funding exactly as it currently stands. Congress hasn’t gone through the line items and made tough choices. Instead, the collective wisdom of the House and Senate has basically been, “Forget it. It’s too hard. Let’s just stick with what we’ve got and we’ll try to figure something out by Dec. 11.” Mind you, the Oct. 1 deadline is the same every year and Congress has had a full nine months to pass the bills required of us.
As has been the case since Republicans took over, the House began the year dutifully working through the 12 annual appropriations bills. As the months wore on, it became increasingly clear that the Democrats in the Senate were going to make good on their promise to block consideration of each and every one unless the bills funded the government at levels well above the caps set in the Budget Control Act. No compromise would be reached. Both sides viewed capitulation as total surrender. Zero budgeting bills were passed by the Senate and eventually the House gave up as well.
If you are mad as can be at Congress for getting nothing done, but you can’t quite articulate to your friends exactly why, this sort of nonsense is a good detail to keep in your back pocket. In better news, the House did pass the annual National Defense Authorization Act. As a member of the Armed Services Committee, this bill occupies countless hours of my time during the first quarter of the year. Collectively, we go through every single item in the Defense budget line by line and make tweaks and adjustments where we see fit. As in years past, we had a lot of success this year and I was very pleased to see the bill come out of committee on a nearly unanimous bipartisan vote.
Rare indeed these days.
Tragically, despite the Democrats’ overwhelming support coming out of committee, the President decided to threaten to veto the bill because we’re boosting defense spending but not his beloved non-defense spending. In the spirit of fairness as he sees it, I can understand where he’s coming. In the spirit of the Commander-in-Chief putting partisan politics before national security, I truly can’t. This bill has passed Congress and been signed into law for 54 years running. He’s threatening to make history by blocking it.
Frankly, a House committee in this day and age can’t do much better than nearly-unanimous bipartisan support. What he’s objecting to has nothing to do with the actual content of the bill, it’s what’s missing from other bills. He’s quite literally holding our military hostage to try and force funding for other unrelated domestic programs. I am truly sorry to my more liberal readers who may support him in his desire to see domestic spending go back where it was, but trying to use the military to get more funding for favorite pet projects back home just isn’t something I can abide. In any case, it remains to be seen how all of this shakes out. We did the hard work of coming up with the most honest, priority-driven reassessment of the defense budget we could in the House.
The Senate did the same. If the President wants to veto it, it’s certainly his prerogative to do so – as it is the prerogative of all of the Democrat members of the House who voted for the bill coming out of committee and then against it when it hit the House floor. Personally, for the good of the troops and the security of this nation, I hope cooler heads prevail.
Congressman Rich Nugent represents The Villages in the U.S. House of Representatives.
