By now, we all know the terms of the debt ceiling and government spending bill President Joe Biden signed last weekend after an acrimonious weekslong negotiation with House Republicans. The White House got the debt limit extended to January 2025, allowing Biden to avoid another costly fight as he campaigns for reelection. Republicans got spending caps on nondefense discretionary spending in 2024 and 2025. Defense spending, meanwhile, was locked in at $886 billion for 2024 (a 3.3% increase from the previous year) and $895 billion for 2025.
Defense hawks, however, were aghast that the Pentagon was included in the spending caps at all. Their argument boils down to this: Because the budget numbers don't keep pace with inflation, the 3.3% increase amounts to a spending cut. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) blasted the defense numbers as “the worst part of the deal,” particularly in 2025, when the defense budget only increases by 1%.
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Before the ink was even dry, senators were spit-balling ideas to get around the two-year caps, either through a defense supplemental or by loading the next Ukraine aid assistance package with extraneous items that have nothing to do with Ukraine. Others couldn’t wait that long; Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) introduced an amendment to beef up the defense budget by $70 billion, which would have blown up the entire agreement and catapulted the country into default (the amendment failed). For good or ill, defense hawks have a lot of sway in the Senate; Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had to issue a statement to mollify them, stressing that the budget deal in no way, shape, or form prevents lawmakers from debating a defense supplemental in the future.
If using a stand-alone measure or a separate Ukraine aid package as a vehicle to get around budget caps sounds familiar, that’s because it is. In the not-so-distant past, lawmakers were able to claim respect for budget caps while practically subverting them by using the Overseas Contingency Operations account, which was originally established to fund war-related requirements pertaining to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the broader war on terrorism.
It didn’t take long, however, for lawmakers to turn it into a second defense budget, an escape valve for items that couldn’t be included in the Pentagon’s base budget due to spending limitations. The tactic became so absurd that people began labeling the account a “slush fund.” The Congressional Budget Office estimated that two-thirds of the Obama administration’s 2019 Overseas Contingency Operations requests would ordinarily be in the base budget.
Technically, a Ukraine aid supplemental is a different animal than that account, which was part of the regular budget process. Supplementals are, by definition, requests made outside of regular budgeting. The principle, though, is the same: use whatever opportunity exists to sidestep financial limitations on defense. It’s a form of cheating that is both legal and convenient.
There’s no question defense hawks will try to raise the top line through budget shenanigans. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, telegraphed the strategy days ago.
The question is whether Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) will allow the House to cooperate with such a scheme. His early words suggest opposition. Asked about a possible supplemental being used to get around the deal he personally negotiated, McCarthy told Punchbowl News that it was a nonstarter. "I’m not going to pre-judge what some of them [in the Senate] do,” the speaker said, “but if they think they’re writing a supplemental because they want to go around an agreement we just made, it’s not going anywhere.” What the speaker seems to be saying is if you want more money for defense, then you A) need to justify why the funds are required and B) work within the budget numbers that were just agreed to.
Consider me skeptical that McCarthy will follow through on this. It’s not like the House Republican conference is opposed to bigger defense budgets in principle. Even fiscal conservatives such as Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), who has taken on deficit reduction as a sacred cause, dispelled the notion that the Defense Department should be given the same treatment as other agencies. The same can be said with the House Freedom Caucus at large, which treated defense differently than all other spending.
But if McCarthy is serious, we could be in for a showdown between defense hawks on the one hand and the speaker on the other.
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Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.