The GOP-led Senate is expected to take up the two-year comprehensive budget deal this week that includes $738 billion in fiscal 2020 defense spending even as significant numbers of House Republicans voted against the bill Thursday as too costly and lacking sufficient military funding.
The $2.7 trillion measure, which easily passed the House 284-149 Thursday, quickly advanced to the Senate after intensive lobbying from the White House and leaders from both parties, but it only received close to one-third of House Republican votes, Military Times reported.
Prior to the comprehensive agreement negotiated by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the White House and top Republican lawmakers called for more in defense spending while the Democratic negotiators sought increased military spending be offset with higher nondefense spending, according to the report.
After passing in the Democrat-led House Thursday, the new bill sent to the Senate increases nondefense spending by about $10 billion more than defense outlays over the next two years, and military spending for fiscal 2020 will be about $12 billion less than Republicans originally supported.
Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said in a statement that the bill is “a massive spending deal that will further in debt future generations and remove reasonable safeguards to prevent the growth of government and the misuse of taxpayer dollars.”
House Armed Services Committee member Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) charged that he could only vote for the bill if it were paired with congressional action to look for paths toward debt reduction.
Earlier this month, House Republicans voted against a $733 billion defense topline in the fiscal 2020 NDAA, primarily claiming insufficient funding totals for national security.
House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Rep. Mac. Thornberry (R-Texas) ultimately joined in supporting the budget bill’s slightly larger $738 billion defense topline, saying the two-year deal would provide much-needed stability for the military.
“Given the political turmoil that comes with an election year … having a two-year budget deal that takes us to the end, hallelujah, of the Budget Control Act is more valuable than if you had held out for a few billion,” Thornberry said.
Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Eric Miller