The House Appropriations Committee has produced all 12 fiscal year 2023 funding bills; six of which have passed the full House on partisan votes. The defense bill, which is likely to skip the House floor and instead go directly into conference once the Senate produces its spending measure, adhered to the president’s budget request, which is widely acknowledged to be too low.

During committee
markup of the bill in late June, democratic leadership repeatedly noted that
they did the best they could for defense with the allocation they were provided
and rejected numerous amendments to add military capability citing a lack of
offsets.

So, how has the
House bill prioritized available resources? And are there really no viable
offsets to increase funding for required military capabilities?

First, the committee bill cuts operations and maintenance (O&M), military personnel, and procurement accounts which are already underfunded in the budget request due to a continued priority on research, development, test and evaluation (RDTE) and a lack of accounting for the impacts of inflation.

The committee cut
more than 50 O&M accounts due to what it calls “unjustified growth.” The
cuts hit accounts such as Army maneuver units, base operations support,
cyberspace activities and operations, flight training, and logistics support.
Navy flight operations, fleet air training, aircraft and depot maintenance, and
ship operations are reduced. Also cut are Air Force flying hours, base
operations support and cyberspace activities. The committee hits these accounts
again with large undistributed “historical unobligated balances” cuts and then adds
undistributed funds back to “restore readiness.” The net cut to O&M is
perplexing, as are the competing undistributed adds and cuts that would appear
to be required for the exact readiness activities to which the committee directed
targeted cuts.

At the same time,
the committee increases accounts that already have healthy budgets and only tangential
links to military capability such as defense-wide civilian-military programs,
community infrastructure, impact aid, and environmental restoration. For
example, the committee increases the National Guard Youth Challenge program by
more than $83 million (65 percent) on top of its already robust $127 million budget
request.

The committee cuts
the military personnel accounts with undistributed reductions by service due to
what it calls “historical unobligated balances.” It is difficult to determine
how such information is available for the new Space Force, and it is tough to
tell how such reductions would be implemented when these funds are required for
the planned 4.6 percent pay raise.

The committee
also reduces procurement accounts, which are already experiencing a priority
deficit within the department, by cutting close to $1 billion from the very
programs that maintain critical air, ground, sea, space, and cyberspace
capacity and keep the industrial base and supply chain operating. Procurement
cuts include the Integrated Visual Augmentation System and modification dollars
for their Stryker and Bradley programs. The Navy saw reductions in the E-2D
Hawkeye and MQ-25 Stingray, while the Air Force’s F-35 and F-15EX procurement
dollars were cut.

Second, the
committee adds nearly a net $1.6 billion to an RDTE budget that is already the
largest in history according to Department of Defense (DOD) budget documents. A
line-by-line review of the committee tables shows close to $5 billion in increases
to the budget for programs that already have adequate budgets. In addition, the
committee adds $1 billion to the Defense Health Program for continuation of
medical research that duplicates ongoing work at the National Institutes of
Health.

Third, the committee report is clogged with direction on issues that have little if anything to do with defense. For example, the committee:

• Directs the Attorney General and federal law
  enforcement agencies to submit a report on training and de-escalation efforts;
• Provides funds for combatant commands to
  partner with the United States Forest Service in support of international
  programs that support national security priorities related to the destabilizing
  effects of extreme weather conditions, without outlining how, with what
  authority, and to what end these activities should be carried out;
• Adds un-requested funds for language programs to promote study
  in elementary and secondary schools—which though potentially beneficial is
  probably more appropriate for the Department of Education; and
• Recommends continued development of
  technologies to capture carbon dioxide from seawater and air to convert to fuel
  that, though worthwhile, should be led by the Department of Energy.

While it is important for the House to move annual appropriations bills through the process to support conference and enactment prior to the start of the fiscal year in October, a bipartisan approach that maintains a focus on sufficient funding for real defense priorities would increase the likelihood of finishing the job on time and avoiding the costly, disruptive, and destructive consequences of starting the fiscal year under temporary funding measures.

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