{"id":1781373,"date":"2022-12-20T07:51:48","date_gmt":"2022-12-20T12:51:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1781373"},"modified":"2022-12-20T10:04:04","modified_gmt":"2022-12-20T15:04:04","slug":"congress-passes-record-defense-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/congress-passes-record-defense-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"Congress Passes Record Defense Bill"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">10<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fcongress-passes-record-defense-bill%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1781373&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><h2 class=\"title-alt-01\"><span class=\"font-color-01\">Budget Matters: Congress Passes Record Defense Bill, Late Again<\/span><\/h2>\n<div class=\"article-main-img\">\n                                <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.nationaldefensemagazine.org\/-\/media\/sites\/magazine\/2022\/12\/istock-1088935808.jpg?h=500&#038;w=878&#038;la=en&#038;hash=21751BAB15DA666A171D88760B433AB5\" alt=\"\"   style=\"display:none\">\n                            <\/div>\n<p class=\"photo-credit\">iStock illustration<\/p>\n<p>There was white smoke coming out of Congress. Late on Dec. 15, the message was, <em>habemus legem<\/em>. Congress passed the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. However, a 2023 budget was still nowhere to be seen as Congress extended the continuing resolution until Dec. 23.<\/p>\n<p>The annual defense bill came some 75\u00a0days after the start of the fiscal year. That\u2019s worse than usual. According to a Congressional Research Service report, \u201cFY2022 National Defense Authorization Act: Context and Selected Issues for Congress,\u201d since 1977, on average Congress completes the NDAA 42 days after the start of the fiscal year. <\/p>\n<p>The 2023 act merged the House and Senate versions marked up during the summer and authorizes a record $857 billion for national defense: $816.7 billion for the Pentagon, $30.3 billion for the Department of Energy, and $10.6 billion for \u201cactivities outside NDAA jurisdiction.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The act authorizes $45 billion more than the White House requested. Congress added $19 billion to compensate for inflation. <\/p>\n<p>For the Air Force, it authorizes five more F-35A joint strike fighters and 10 HH-60W combat rescue helicopters than the initial request and it prohibits retirement of Block 20 F-22 jet fighters, while supporting divestment in the venerable A-10 Thunderbolt II, the subsonic attack aircraft better known as the \u201cWarthog.\u201d  <\/p>\n<p>Congress also plussed up funding for shipbuilding, munitions production and advanced technologies such as unmanned systems, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and electronic warfare tech, according to a Senate summary.<\/p>\n<p>However, due to the delay in passing the NDAA and the continuing resolution, new starts have been on hold and the Defense Department has already lost nearly $18 billion in purchasing power in fiscal year 2023, according to a report by the National Defense Industrial Association, \u201cHow Inflation Hurts America\u2019s National Defense and What We Can Do About it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That number will increase until Congress passes a 2023 budget.<\/p>\n<p>One person who had a front row seat to the dysfunction is former Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, who served as chair of the House Armed Services Committee. During an interview at a recent conference in Virginia, <em>National Defense<\/em> asked what it will take to break the annual congressional cycle of criticizing the defense budget request for being too low, adding large sums in markup and then failing to pass a final NDAA and budget before the beginning of a fiscal year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are so few legislative vehicles that go through the Congress anymore that everybody wants to put everything on the omnibus or the NDAA,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd so, part of the reason it\u2019s so slow is because it\u2019s all this stuff that\u2019s not related to defense anymore. And we had that problem, and it\u2019s just gotten worse and worse.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That phenomenon was evident in the closing days of 2022 as legislators attempted to attach a host of non-defense amendments to the 2023 NDAA. Senators filed more than 900 amendments. While many were military in nature, others not so much.<\/p>\n<p>Senators rejected a measure to allow banks to conduct business with legal marijuana operations. And an attempt by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., to include an infrastructure permitting reform measure dragged out the proceedings.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHouse and Senate Democrats are still obstructing efforts to close out the NDAA by trying to jam in unrelated items with no relationship whatsoever to defense,\u201d said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in an early December floor statement.<\/p>\n<p>Which gets back to Thornberry\u2019s point \u2014 when there are few bipartisan pieces of legislation each year that members can attach pet projects to, they pile on the must-pass items like the NDAA.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Senate and the House have to have floor time in May to do the bills,\u201d he said. \u201cThen the conference can happen before the end of the fiscal year, but you\u2019ve got to restrict it to defense. You can\u2019t keep allowing all these other issues to catch a ride,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n<p>That requires congressional leadership to move more legislation so \u201cit\u2019s not just three or four bills a year that everything has to attach to,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>One thing that could help the process, he said, is the Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution, or PPBE, that Congress created in the 2022 NDAA. It is tasked with reviewing the budget process, long criticized for being outdated and overly restrictive. The commission\u2019s final report is due in fall 2023.<\/p>\n<p>One concept gaining traction is multi-year portfolio funding. That would allow the department to shift gears and move away from programs that aren\u2019t panning out and shift funds to more promising technologies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m in a lot of conversations, including with some of the commissioners, about what some of the options may be,\u201d Thornberry said.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the ideas are \u201ccountercultural,\u201d he said, and \u201care going to have to shake things up a little to get it done.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Some have cast doubt that appropriators would be willing to give up control and give the Defense Department portfolio flexibility. Thornberry disagreed.<\/p>\n<p>There are appropriations committee members interested in the idea, he said. \u201cBut if you have full transparency in a timely way \u2014 so the Pentagon has to say where every dollar goes when it\u2019s spent \u2014 then I think the appropriators are much more willing to give them more leeway.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Especially when it comes to acquiring rapidly evolving technology like software, that kind of flexibility \u201cjust makes sense,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>If only that were the threshold for getting things done on the Hill. Passing a budget on time each year makes sense, too.<\/p>\n<p>\n                                <strong class=\"font-color-01 font-size-02\">Topics:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationaldefensemagazine.org\/articles?Topic={71EE8BFD-D3A4-4AFD-B5E9-895E3AEAF4EC}\">Budget<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationaldefensemagazine.org\/articles?Topic={54D6C881-A1E6-42D1-BDF5-AE3949193734}\">Defense Department<\/a>\n                            <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Budget Matters: Congress Passes Record Defense Bill, Late Again  iStock illustration There was white smoke coming out of Congress. Late on Dec. 15, the message was, habemus<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1781376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[547],"tags":[5458,4402,3998,5448,4752,3819],"class_list":["post-1781373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-bongino-report","tag-bongino","tag-congress","tag-defense","tag-passes","tag-record","tag-report"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1781373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1781373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1781373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1781376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1781373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1781373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1781373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}