As the United States’ forward-deployed military force, the Department of the Navy and its Marine Corps deal with daily provocations from the “seabed to the stars” across the globe.
Contending with an expanding Chinese navy in the South China Sea, responding to North Korea’s missile launches, and staying on station in the Black Sea despite Russian harassment, these are familiar missions for sailors and Marines in the face of agitation in hot spots across and above the planet.
But what the sea service—or any other military branch—can’t contend with is partisan brinkmanship in Congress over their budgets.
With Republicans vowing to slash the debt limit and the House GOP responding to President Joe Biden’s $6.8 trillion fiscal year 2024 budget request with a plan to revert funding to fiscal year 2022 levels, partisan gridlock looms as another “malign actor” that threatens national security, Navy and Marine Corps top brass told the House Armed Forces Committee on April 28.
“Passing the budget on time is essential. Certainly, our adversaries are not slowing down,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday said.
If common ground on a fiscal year 24 budget can’t be found by Oct. 1, when the federal fiscal year goes into effect, a continuing resolution (CR) will be needed to sustain day-to-day federal funding, but little else.
That failure by Congress to do its one statutory annual job—pass a budget—for the 13th time in the past 26 years would have “devastating” repercussions that will ripple for years, according to Gilday, whose cautionary advice was echoed by Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro and Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger during a three-hour hearing.
Congress has become reliant on CRs rather than passing annual budgets, enacting 131 of the stopgap funding measures between 1998 and 2023 while adopting just 13 annual budgets over the past 25 years.
Bipartisan Panel Consensus: Pass a Budget
The Navy and Marine Corps are demanding that this be one of those years that Congress actually adopts a budget to implement the Department of Defense’s proposed $860 billion spending plan, which includes $255.8 billion for the Navy—a 4.5 percent increase—and $53.2 billion for the Marines, about a 3 percent hike from the existing budget.A continuing resolution won’t cut it, according to Chair Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) and Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the committee’s ranking Democrat, in a rare example of bipartisan accord.
“I’ve heard from colleagues, they’re just going to pass CRs,” Smith said. “That would be a total disaster for the United States military. Let’s not kid ourselves about what impact that would have on what is supposed to be our paramount duty: defend this country. We need to pass appropriations bills.”
Rogers referred to funding the military with a continuing resolution as “a China Resolution” since such a congressional failure would benefit the People’s Republic of China and other adversaries.
“The threat of a yearlong continuing resolution seems like a real possibility,” Gilday said. “Let me be clear: A yearlong CR would be devastating for your Navy and for America’s national security.”
Without approval of requests in its budget, the Navy chief said deliveries of two new Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, including one this year, would be set back.
Funding under a CR would “delay construction of our [planned] attack submarines, risk surface combatants,” according to Gilday.
“It would postpone the modernization of our most critical weapons systems,“ he said. ”It would adversely impact our sailors and their families who we are trying so hard to retain. It would be disastrous for our industrial base, America’s arsenal.”
The lost year of budget funding would affect programs for years, Gilday said.
“Failing to [adopt a budget] would damage our maritime superiority at a time when command of the seas will determine the balance of power for the rest of this century,” he said.
China Increasing Military Spending More Than US
Del Toro said that without the funding outlined in the fiscal year 24 spending request, the Navy can’t address the “fighter gap” or make the investments it would like to make in training and technology.CR funding would have “a negative effect on just about every major platform ... in the Department of the Navy,” he said.
China announced in March that it was increasing its military budget by 7.2 percent after boosting it by 7.1 percent the year before. The incremental increases, as well as the gap between corresponding military allocations, appreciate over time, he said, making it difficult to stay ahead of China in terms of sheer volume.
“We cannot keep pace,” Del Toro said, comparing the adoption of a CR rather than a budget to an NFL team that voluntarily opts out of the draft.
Berger said, “We would pull ourselves out of the draft on purpose and everybody else would pick better players and have a better roster next year. We can’t modernize. We can’t take care of our people unless we get a budget on time. We are tying our own hands.”
“I want everybody to know—we get into a conflict in the Indo-Pacific, these folks in front of us, they are the tip of the spear,” Rogers said. “We cannot let them go without the funding they need.”
In fact, he said, the Pentagon—or, at least, the Navy—should be asking for bigger increases than 5 percent for its maritime forces and 3 percent for the Marines, especially with China outpacing the United States in increased military spending.
Even at 5 and 3 percent, “with today’s record level of inflation, these increases don’t go very far,” Rogers said.
Smith said either Rogers is out of step with many in his party or suffering from “cognitive dissonance.”
“We have this logical challenge. Here’s what we’d like to do, and here’s how much money we have. And you, gentlemen,” Smith said, referring to Gilday, Del Toro, and Berger, “have to deal with what I like to call our ‘cognitive dissonance.’”
Turning to Rogers, Smith said, “At the same time you would beat me for not spending enough money [on defense], the House majority is passing a bill to cut the overall amount of money that we spend in our budget.
“I used to have an analogy about 10 pounds of manure in a five-pound bag, but I’ve discovered most people don’t like that analogy. But I think, nonetheless, it is apt. That’s what you’re trying to do.
“You spend all this time complaining we’re not spending enough money and then all of our time whining about how we spend too much money. You’ve kind of got to pick a lane on that one or you’re going to put people, like the Department of Defense, like all of these fine gentlemen, in an absolutely impossible position.”
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