Visclosky statement on FY2017 Defense Appropriations bill

Chairman Frelinghuysen, I would like to begin by conveying my deep appreciation for your steady leadership of the Defense Subcommittee.  Your commitment to this subcommittee’s tradition of cooperative bipartisanship is unwavering and it is a pleasure working with you. 

 

I also would like to express my gratitude to Chairman Rogers, Ranking Member Lowey, and the other Members of the Subcommittee for their efforts.  And thank you to the Subcommittee staff and the associate staff for their hard work.

 

I also want to take this opportunity to mention our subcommittee colleagues who will be leaving the House at the end of the 114th Congress – Mr. Crenshaw and Mr. Israel.  Both have made valuable contributions during their tenure on this Committee and in the House.  They will be missed.    

 

The Chairman has well and clearly articulated the major elements of the bill and report.  Even under less than ideal circumstances and unsettled conditions, he and the Subcommittee staff have again demonstrated their talent and acumen in putting together this legislation.  My written remarks, which are printed and before you, provide more details on what I see as the highlights of the bill and there are many.  However, I would like to use the balance of my time to discuss the circumstances and conditions that led to the proposal to use nearly 27 percent of the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) accounts to fund base Department of Defense programs, which gives me pause as an Appropriator. 

 

It was as an Appropriator that I opposed the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA) and its arbitrary spending caps that only address one-sixth of the federal budget equation.  In each session of Congress we should be making discrete decisions on how we annually invest our discretionary dollars.  Setting inflexible spending targets for 10 years is nonsensical.  I believe we need to invest more in our roads, ports, water pipes, universities, and our defense.  We might disagree on the ways to generate more resources, and the need to have a fulsome discussion of our entitlement programs, but my assumption is that there are very few people in this room who believe that the federal government is currently making enough of a long-term investment in our nation and its interests.        

 

And it was as an Appropriator that I voted for the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 (BBA), which mitigated the BCA caps on base discretionary funding and capped OCO spending for Fiscal Years (FY) 2016 and 2017.  I obviously would have rather seen the complete repeal of the BCA, but nonetheless, I supported the BBA, because it provided some clarity to the Appropriations process for the balance of the 114th Congress.  As such, we were able to wrap up the FY 2016 process and, with a number for FY 2017, I was guardedly optimistic that the House would return to regular order. 

 

Our subcommittee was far along in its FY 2017 process, when the OCO to Base strategy – conceived to placate some on other Committees – was settled upon as the strategy for the House Majority.  While this bill technically does not violate the caps established by the BBA for base defense programs and OCO, it is hard to argue that this bill was assembled under what passes for normalcy in this Congress.  And there is no doubt that the Chairman and Subcommittee staff made smart investment decisions in executing the $15.7 billion in OCO to Base funding strategy, but I am troubled with the circumstances that compelled the subcommittee’s action.

 

First and foremost, the fiscal year begins on October 1, 2016, not May 1, 2017, and it is the responsibility of those of us holding office in the 2nd session of the 114th Congress to execute the FY 2017 appropriations process.  In order to make OCO funding available for base programs, our bill only provides enough funding to fully support the warfighter until the end of April 2017, which is five months before the end of the fiscal year.  This is intended to force the next administration and the next Congress to pass a supplemental in calendar year 2017 to support ongoing combat operations.  It is not the responsibility of the 115th Congress to finish a predetermined fraction of our work, and we should not be dismissive of the difficulties we face.  To assume there will be smooth sailing for a supplemental appropriations bill in the spring is Pollyannaish.  We do not know who will be in the White House, who will be the civilian leadership at DoD, or even the composition of the next Congress.  And as we can clearly see from the Zika Virus debate, and before that Hurricane Sandy, supplemental appropriations bills are not without controversy.

 

Additionally, in making the $15.7 billion in cuts to the OCO budget request, the Committee had to make some assumptions on the pace of combat operations between now and May 2017.  While the Chairman exercised caution, there is not much wiggle room in the interim.  If the OCO spend rate were to increase for any reason, Congress and a new Administration would have to act quickly to pass a supplemental early in 2017.  If that supplemental were not timely, the Department would likely be forced to reprogram or transfer base dollars to OCO, which shortchanges other priorities, negates the committee’s funding levels, and still requires a supplemental to backfill both base and OCO while not violating the BCA caps.  And, will said supplemental be funded by offsets from resources within the other 11 bills within the full committee’s jurisdiction?

 

Adding to the uncertainty, the House Majority is going it alone with this strategy.  To date, it has been soundly rejected by the Administration, the Senate Appropriations Committee, and the Senate authorizers.  While those three are not infallible, I fear that if the House Majority insists upon heading down this path, we are looking at an impossible conference process. 

 

Putting concerns over uncertainty aside, I further believe the OCO to Base strategy abdicates our discretion to the Department of Defense in executing the remaining OCO funding.  In order to free up $15.7 billion, certain appropriations in OCO were subject to reductions.  These reductions were done at the account level, not at the program level.  For example, Navy O&M in the OCO Title was reduced by $2.9 billion, from its requested level of $6.8 billion.  The Department has discretion on how it will apply that $2.9 billion reduction across the tens of programs under that account. 

 

A final concern I have, and one expressed in prior years’ markups, is that we should eliminate the reliance on OCO funding and shift activities to the base budget.  It is increasingly difficult after fifteen years of war to argue that this operational tempo for our military is a contingency and not the new normal in defending our nation and our interests.  This Subcommittee had begun to limit what is an eligible expense in OCO, but we have clearly taken a step back under the BBA and, this latest proposal would take us even farther down that path.  For example, this bill proposes to increase end strength by 52,000 above planned reductions for the Army, Marine Corps, and Air Force.  And I agree that we need more personnel, but this additional force structure costs $3 billion in FY 2017 and is paid for with OCO to Base dollars.  I understand that OCO provides a path of least resistance to increasing defense spending and allows for the postponement of some very difficult decisions. However, we cannot keep deferring tough decisions. This is particularly true when recognizing the fact that BCA caps are scheduled to lower defense spending by $2 billion in FY 2018. An increase in end strength creates a tail of spending in future years. The DoD estimates that the troop levels funded in the bill will increase spending by $30 billion over five years.  That is $30 billion that is not budgeted for, but $30 billion that our Committee will be expected to pay for.  

 

In closing, Mr. Chairman, I have gone on for some time about my concerns with the circumstances that have resulted in the crafting of less than three percent of the total bill.  But these circumstances and the uncertainty they introduce are an unnecessary complication that have increased the burden to the Chair, the Committee, and the staff.  It is a mark of their talent, their commitment to our troops and our nation’s defense, and their seriousness of purpose, that they have done so much good to ameliorate the problems caused by this approach.  I look forward to working with the Chairman and the members of the Committee to advance the process and complete the task before us.

 

Thank you again, Mr. Chairman for the time.

 

 Bill Highlights

• The bill counters Russian aggression, in part by providing an additional $150 million for Ukraine and funding for the European Reassurance Initiative (ERI) to increase the U.S. presence in NATO and eastern European nations.

 

• The bill includes “Buy America” general provisions to ensure American goods are used for production of military equipment, helping to maintain the Defense Industrial Base.

 

• The bill provides $6.7 billion for cyber security, nearly $1 billion more than FY 2016. Funding would be used to help cyber mission forces to become fully operational by the end of 2018, advance cyber training across the department, and support both defense and offensive operations.

 

• The bill again provides $250 million, which was not in the President’s request, for the Rapid Innovation Fund to incorporate small business developments into DoD programs. This fund allows small businesses with big ideas for national security problems to participate, providing a path into the defense acquisition community.

 

• The bill provides a robust investment in several important National Guard modernization programs and $1 billion for the National Guard and Reserve Equipment Account, which allows these components to procure high priority equipment for their dual missions.

 

• The bill provides a pay raise of 2.1 percent, 0.5 percent above the President’s Request.

 

• The bill provides robust funding for medical research, to include an additional $282 million for cancer research, $125 million for peer-reviewed psychological health and traumatic brain injury research program, and a greater focus on hearing and vision restoration.

 

• The bill continues to support efforts on sexual assault prevention and response, providing $25 million above the request for Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program requirements.

 

• The bill supports Operation Observant Compass and the Humanitarian Mine Action program.  These are just two of the many smaller programs and operations undertaken by the Department that work closely with host nations, while addressing a humanitarian need.