Recently, the Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, said he could not support the proposed 2016 Defense Budget if it put other agencies in jeopardy:
"This funding approach … reflects a narrow way of looking at our national security — one that ignores the vital contributions made by the State, Justice, Treasury and Homeland Security Departments," Carter told the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, "and disregards the enduring long-term connection between our nation's security and many other factors."Seems like a good approach, right? Point out the very valid concern that non DoD departments also have responsibility for security of our nation and they deserve appropriate funding as well. It ended up being a big FAIL as Republicans in Congress berated the SecDef and that news made more headlines than the actual funding issues.
Yet Dems doubled down on this exact approach, hoping it might make a difference.
Yesterday, the Washington Post blamed President Obama and Democrats in Congress for setting unreasonable demands for their guaranteed support of the 2016 Defense Budget:
Now Republicans and Democrats accuse each other of taking the defense and domestic budgets hostage — and that’s where our sympathy for the president’s position ends. He’s helped set this blame game in motion, when his role as commander in chief should cause him to rise above it. We agree that discretionary programs need more money, and that some of them, such as Homeland Security and the State Department, pay security dividends as well. Sequestration should be reversed.
The irony? WaPo thinks there are problems with the proposed bill. And so do the Republican Chairs of both the HASC (Rep. Mac Thornberry - R-TX) and the SASC (Sen. John McCain - R-AZ):
The House Armed Services chairman, Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.), topped up the measure to the $612 billion level Mr. Obama requested by labeling $38 billion in permanent funding as “overseas contingency” money — which is emergency spending not subject to budget caps. The Senate committee adopted the same ploy, which its chairman, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), previously derided as a gimmick, and which even Mr. Thornberry concedes is less than honest budgeting.