washingtonscene
LEGISLATIVE NEWS THAT AFFECTS YOU
Crunch Time
After delaying action on all of the big issues until the end of the year, a Congress distracted by the upcoming election faces a compressed schedule to negotiate federal funding and national defense deals.
C
ongress returned to Washing- ton, D.C., in September from its seven-week summer recess to find a fully loaded plate of big issues and
very little time to address them. Funding the government: No. 1 on its agen- da was finding a way to fund the govern- ment for FY 2017, which started Oct. 1. As of this writing, Congress had not yet come to any resolution. At that point, Congress hadn’t passed a single one of the 12 departmental ap- propriations bills, and it was hard to see how it would finish in one month what it hasn’t been able to do in the last eight. To avoid shutting down the government for lack of funds Oct. 1, Congress likely will pass a continuing resolution (CR), which continues funding the government for a specific period of time at the same level in effect during the previous (current) year. At press time, Senate and White
House negotiators were closing in on a short-term CR until Dec. 9, which would get past the election and give Congress some time to work out a longer-term funding deal in a lame duck session from November to December. Another alternative would be a lon- ger CR that would run until mid-March, effectively kicking the problem down- stream for the next Congress to solve. This has happened before, but it
makes the new Congress do double duty — coming up with and passing one set of appropriations bills for the rest of FY
2017, while simultaneously working up new appropriations bills for FY 2018. As you can imagine, that can get pretty
messy. Defense Authorization Bill: Almost as im-
portant for the military community, House and Senate leaders still have to hammer out a compromise between their two different versions of the FY 2017 De- fense Authorization Bill. This is a tall order because the two chambers’ bills have more significant dif- ferences than they have had in years. Some of the key sticking points include:
Whether DoD should get extra funding above the caps in the last budget deal. Lead-
ers of both Armed Services committees believe the answer is “yes.” The president and most Democrats in Congress believe any relief from the cap on defense spending should be matched by equal relief from the cap on nondefense spending.
Where any extra funds should come from. Both chambers have proposed using the Overseas Contingency Opera- tions (OCO) fund, either by plussing it up or by diverting some of the existing OCO funds to the base defense budget. The latter route would require the next president to request supplemental war funding for FY 2017. Some object to this as underfunding war needs, but Congress did the same thing between the Bush and Obama administrations. What the extra money should pay for. The Senate defense bill caps the military
NOVEMBER 2016 MILITARY OFFICER 29
Late-breaking Update Congress passed a continuing resolu- tion Sept. 29 that keeps the gov- ernment funded through Dec. 9. Funding for the rest of FY 2017 will be addressed in a lame duck session of Congress after the election.
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