House GOP Budget Leaves Spending Caps in Place

Lawmakers attempt to thread needle by boosting other defense accounts

House Republicans said on Tuesday that they are attempting to keep deficit spending low while boosting a shrinking defense budget as they unveiled their budget proposal for 2016.

Led by Rep. Tom Price (R., Ga.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, the House GOP released its budget on Tuesday. The proposal leaves in place sequestration caps on defense spending that have been sharply criticized by military leaders and defense hawks in Congress but adds funding to the Pentagon’s Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account.

The House GOP budget would provide $523 billion in base funding to the Pentagon, along with $94 billion for the OCO account to fight terrorism abroad. Republicans on the Senate side will also release their budget proposal this week.

Republicans admit that while the spending caps have helped to reduce deficits in recent years and ensure fiscal responsibility, defense spending has also declined during a period of global instability. Members of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), a group of House conservatives who will issue their own budget proposal as an amendment next week, said on Tuesday that they are seeking to strike a difficult balance.

“Everybody recognizes that the caps have been a good thing from a fiscal perspective, but I think virtually all of the [GOP] conference realizes that they’ve also been harmful to defense,” said Rep. Bill Flores (R., Texas), RSC chairman.

“Now the tension is, how do you fix it?” he added.

More