Where does the defense budget debate stand? Rep. Rob Wittman gives an update

Hey folks, I'm Congressman Rob Whitman, and I wish I could be there to join you this week

to give you in person an update on what's happening with the National Defense Authorization

Act and defense approach, but I'll try to give you a short overview with where things are

The House has now passed the amendment submission deadline for the National Defense Authorization

Act, and well over a thousand amendments have been submitted. We will try to work through all those as quickly as we can when the bill comes to the floor next week

The Senate is taking up their version of defense authorization this week

It looks like they will try to work through a bill that at least gives a framework of what the Senate puts out

but will not potentially be voted on by the full Senate. That's most likely the version that's going to be conferenced in relation to what the House passes out

hopefully sometime next week. So we see that progressing in the next several weeks

to hopefully be able to get to a committee of conference and work out the differences between the two bills

If you look at the amounts in both bills, you see that the House bill marks to the president budget both on the authorization side and the appropriation side It around billion The Senate marks to a number that about billion higher than the president budget

or the House's number. So we'll have to reconcile that difference between those two bills and figure out how

do we get to a point where we can get the necessary votes to pass both the House and

the Senate. It funds a number of very important priorities, things like Golden Dome, shipbuilding, modernization, weapons magazine, depth, munitions, and missiles

All those things are incredibly important, as well as modernization for us to fund new platforms, especially exquisite platforms, as it matters in what we're doing going forward

but also, in addition to the exquisite platforms, funding the expendables and intrudables

That's a big part of modernizing our forces, and that's very apparent as you look at the conflict that we see in Ukraine

The efforts have to revolve around us continuing to keep government operating I know there a lot of consternation myself included about using continuing resolutions to continue to fund the government Folks I suspect they will have at the very least a short CR but there a lot of

back and forth about what that will be and if it will indeed pass. I am not in favor of a

government shutdown. I think those are incredibly harmful. They waste billions of dollars and it's

just an abdication of our responsibility to get a job done. If you look to the reconciliation bill

$150 billion additional dollars is a good help in getting our military modernized. But all of the

positive effects of that go away if we have a long-term CR. I would argue it is even impacted

by a short-term CR, but not as much as if you go to a year-long CR like we had last year

You look at how the appropriations are laid out in the reconciliation bill, and it's about $113 billion in the first year

A lot of that potentially would get eaten up by a CR if the CR goes for the full year

So I'm adamantly opposed to that. We need to get the job done

I understand there are divisions here but those divisions should not get in the way of us getting legislation passed and I want to make sure that we get appropriations bills done If we have a CR which is looking more and more likely there no way we get all this done by the end of September

I want it to be as short a term CR as possible to make sure we continue to keep the government

open and we continue down the road of getting things done in the interest of our nation. That's

our basic responsibility here. So I think that those things will get done. There'll be a lot of

noise, a lot of consternation back and forth, but I think you'll see both bodies pass some version

of the National Defense Authorization Act. I think that both of those bodies' versions will go to

conference, so the House and Senate version will go to conference. I believe, too, now that the House

has passed the Defense Appropes Bill, that there is at least a path forward on defense approach

but we have to be able to get to getting that passed between both bodies, which means there

most likely will be a short-term CR, and that in and of itself is problematic, but I think that

we will be able to get these things done. It is a high wire act, especially with narrow majorities

in the House and then needing 60 votes in the Senate. Those are not easy milestones to reach

but I am confident that we will get there and make sure we get the critical work of the nation done