Key Republicans Support Ditching McCarthy–Biden Debt Ceiling Deal to Boost Defense Budget

Ranking Member Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) speaks during a hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on Feb. 15, 2023. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Key Republicans are calling for more defense spending than is permitted under the debt ceiling deal negotiated less than a month ago between House GOP leadership and the Biden administration.

Senate Armed Services Committee ranking Republican Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.)—in a statement accompanying the panel’s June 23 adoption of the $886.3 billion fiscal year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (FY24 NDAA)—said the proposed annual defense budget “does not adequately fund our defense needs, and I will work to increase the Department of Defense top level as the bill progresses.”

Wicker is among bipartisan critics who note that the debt ceiling deal constrains defense spending to “a historic low” relative to the United States’ gross domestic product and that its 3.3 percent cap above last year’s NDAA is more than 2 percent below the current rate of inflation.

A more robust defense budget is “the best way to deter conflict around the globe,” Wicker said, noting he agrees with committee Chair Rep. Jack Reed’s (D-R.I.) nonbinding statement that “there are growing national security concerns that require additional funds beyond the defense spending limit,” urging Biden “to send emergency supplemental funding requests to address those concerns.”

The House Armed Service Committee in a 58–1 vote on June 22 adopted a similar defense budget as its Senate counterpart, with both featuring the $886 billion top line that matches the Biden administration’s March defense budget request.

But the House plan doesn’t call for additional funding or supplemental defense appropriations, which the Senate Armed Services Committee explicitly does in its proposed defense authorization act, adopted on June 23 in a 24–1 vote.

Nevertheless, House Armed Services Committee Chair Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) is among House GOP critics who say the proposed defense budget is “inadequate.”

A strong advocate for U.S. support for Ukraine, Rogers has been less vocal in backing more funding for Kyiv in recent weeks but has said that more money should be directed into countering China’s growing military.

No Debt-Deal NDAA?

The House and Senate armed services committees last week adopted their versions of the proposed 2024 defense authorization act, setting the stage for floor adoptions, a summer of intra-chamber conferencing and, ideally, adoption by late September.

While both proposed FY24 NDAAs reflect the $886.3 billion top-line figure submitted by the Biden administration, they aren’t identical.

The Senate earmarks $876.8 billion in defense spending while the House’s version outlines $874.2 billion. Each plan estimates varied nondefense appropriations to reach a common top line of $886.3 billion.

As of June 26, the Senate has released only a 33-page executive summary of its proposed plan, which is far less detailed than the 416-page draft NDAA approved by the House Armed Services Committee.

The Senate and House are expected to pass their versions of the defense authorization act in July chamber votes. The House doesn’t convene again until July 11. The Senate returns the following day. Few hearings have been penciled in on the chambers’ July calendar.

Once each chamber adopts its proposed NDAA, conflicts within the plans will be reconciled in bicameral conferencing through summer before one common plan is presented for adoption to both chambers and then to Biden.

Under terms of the new debt ceiling law, the act must be adopted before the new fiscal year begins, on Oct. 1. Failure to do so would induce a 1 percent across-the-board spending trim.

The debt ceiling bill was passed by the House on May 31 and the Senate on June 1. It suspends the nation’s $31.4 trillion borrowing limit until January 2025 in exchange for caps on federal discretionary spending over the next two years.

Under the deal, to provide the 3.3 percent increase in defense spending, discretionary nondefense spending in the FY24 federal budget is capped at $703.7 billion and then limited to no more than a 1 percent increase in 2025.

House Republicans have proposed trimming an additional $120 billion from federal discretionary nondefense spending with proposed cuts of 15 to 30 percent for the Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Interior, Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services departments.

Possible Supplemental Bill

Congressional Democrats oppose the proposed slashes in nondefense spending. They are also raising questions about the viability of the $886 billion cap on the defense budget with Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in agreement that some boost in defense spending is going to be considered this summer or fall.

Senate Appropriations Committee ranking Republican Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) are among GOP Senate leaders calling for more defense money.

During a June 22 Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, both questioned the viability of the debt-ceiling deal cap and called for increasing defense spending later this year, possibly with a supplemental defense spending bill that includes more money for addressing the issue of China and more money than the $300 million earmarked for Ukraine.

“If you’re looking at China’s navy and you think now’s the time to shrink our Navy, you sure as hell shouldn’t be in the Navy. We go from 298 ships under this budget deal to eventually 291,” Graham said. “You sunk the Navy. The Congress has sunk eight ships. How many fighter squadrons have we parked because of this deal?”

Both chambers’ proposed NDAAs include the Biden administration’s $300 million request for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which is a fund that allows the Pentagon and administration access without congressional approval to provide weapons and munitions outside the Pentagon’s budget and stockpiles.

Rep. Jared Golden (D-Colo.) proposed an amendment seeking to “restore funding” to this year’s $800 million, but it was shot down by the House panel on June 21.

But in his comments before the Senate Appropriations Committee the next day, Graham said the defense authorization act will not be of much help to Ukraine in its war against Russia unless more money is added or a supplemental spending measure is proposed.

“There’s not a penny in this deal to help them keep fighting,” Graham said. “Do you really want to be judged in history as having, at a moment of consequence to defeat Putin, to pull all the money for Ukraine?”

House Leaders: No Dice

A significant cadre within the House GOP, including Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), want the Ukraine funding spigot turned off.

They are within a larger caucus of Republicans who want the entire federal network of cash-pumping waterworks to be shut down for, as they say, inspection and repair.

House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), in numerous comments through June, indicate they aren’t backing down from the top-line allocations in the debt ceiling deal.

If critics want more money for defense spending, they’ll need to find it in discretionary nondefense accounts, McCarthy has steadfastly maintained.

Momentum for a supplemental defense bill, especially if it includes money for Ukraine, is “not going anywhere,” he said in early June.

One reason some proponents say a supplemental bill is best suited to debate additional defense spending is that under the debt ceiling deal, all 12 appropriations bills that constitute the federal FY24 budget must be adopted by Dec. 31 or incur a 1 percent cut across the board.

Allowing the NDAA to be ensnared in debate over the spending cap limit could induce a stalemate that provides incremental stopgap funding at 1 percent or lower of current expenditures, a provision critics say would be devastating for the nation’s defense.