House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) threw cold water on the idea of a supplemental defense spending bill.
In comments to reporters on Capitol Hill on June 5, McCarthy cited that the bipartisan debt ceiling bill that passed Congress last week and was signed into law by President Joe Biden on June 3 addressed defense spending. The now-law was a product of weekslong negotiations between McCarthy and Biden.
“Why do you move to a supplemental when we just passed [the debt ceiling bill]? The idea of a supplemental is to go around the agreement we just came through,” said McCarthy. “I think we’ve got to walk through appropriations. I mean, I don’t understand what the process is.
“Now is the time to work on appropriations,” he added.
The debt ceiling law includes a commitment to spend almost $886.35 billion on defense in fiscal year 2024 and just over $895.21 billion the following fiscal year.
When asked by The Epoch Times whether the top-line defense spending caps will be sufficient to counter America’s adversaries—which include China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea—McCarthy said “yes.”
“And the thing I think we really need to look at, especially in the Defense Department, I had a long conversation with the president about this and with a number of members, we’ve been working on this,” he said. “We need to reform the Defense Department. I mean, people on all sides. I consider myself a hawk.”
McCarthy went on to cite defense issues, including “permitting, our ability to move weapons faster, our ability to rebuild our manufacturing base by building weapons, especially for selling to our allies and others.”
McCarthy said that the past five Defense Department audits turned out negatively.
“In November 2022, the DOD failed its fifth consecutive audit, unable to account for 61 percent of its $3.5 trillion in assets. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) also recently reported that DOD continues to fail to accurately account for hundreds of billions of dollars of government furnished property in the hands of contractors,” they wrote. “DOD’s inability to adequately track assets risks our military readiness and represents a flagrant disregard for taxpayer funds, even as it receives nearly a trillion dollars annually.”
McCarthy said that “there’s a lot of place for reform that we can have a lot of savings.” He also noted that the top lines are “the most money we’ve ever spent on defense.”
“This is the most money anyone in the world has ever spent on defense,” McCarthy said. “So I don’t think the first answer is to do a supplemental.”
Some Republican and Democrat senators have called for a supplemental defense spending bill.
On June 1, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who voted against the debt ceiling bill, warned that it “poses a mortal risk to our national security by cutting our defense budget” and that “domestic spending will go up and defense spending will go down if the sequester kicks in.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) remarked that the legislation would make America ill-prepared to deal with threats from abroad.
“You cannot say with a straight face that this military budget is a counter to Chinese aggression, that it adequately allows us to defeat [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” he said. “You cannot say with a straight face that this budget represents the threats America faces. A military budget should be based on threats, not political deals to avoid default.”
Graham, who also voted against the debt ceiling bill, noted that, according to Adm. Michael Gilday, chief of naval operations, amid today’s global threats, the United States needs 373 manned ships and 150 unmanned platforms, thereby requiring an increase of 5 percent above inflation. Unless that occurs, said Graham, there would be, in fiscal year 2025, 10 fewer ships than the 296 manned ships currently in use.
“The top line is inadequate, the CR [continuing resolution] is devastating, and what bothers me the most is that we would put the Department of Defense in this position. We are playing with the men and women’s lives in [the] military, their ability to defend themselves, as some chess game in Washington,” said Graham.
“Well, this is checkers at best,” he continued. “The fact that you would punish the military because we can’t do our jobs as politicians is a pretty sad moment for me.”
Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) weighed defense spending against the gross domestic product (GDP).
“The No. 1 priority of the U.S. Congress should be, in my view, what percentage of our national wealth we’re dedicating to defense,” he said.
“This budget will take us in the next two years—with the cut this year, inflation-adjusted cut of 4 to 5 percent, and a nominal increase next year of 1 percent, which would be about a 5 to 6 percent cut—it will take us below the 3 percent of GDP number for defense for the first time since 1999, during the peace dividend era of the [Bill] Clinton administration,” Sullivan said. “We will be below 3 percent of GDP.”
Sullivan, who voted against the debt ceiling bill, cited what GDP percentage the United States has spent on conflicts: 15 percent with the Korean War; 8 percent with the Vietnam War; 4.5 percent with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the War on Terror. The Cold War and Reagan-era military buildup consumed around 6 percent of the GDP.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who voted for the debt ceiling bill, called for a commitment from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to bring forth an “emergency” supplemental defense spending bill and to pass all 12 appropriations bills on time.
Democrat senators who have called for a supplemental defense spending bill include Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), and Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
However, Schumer would not commit to such a supplemental bill. He told The Epoch Times, following the Senate passing the debt ceiling bill, that such a measure is “a possibility” and “certainly on the table.”
Schumer and McConnell, in the statement, also said that “expeditious floor consideration will require cooperation from senators in both parties” in order to avoid sequestration.
