Defense hawks sound off on budget plan

Republican security hawks griped Tuesday about a new plan to have floor votes decide whether the House budget has more robust defense spending, saying the GOP leadership keeps changing its strategy.

{mosads}Dozens of GOP defense hawks have said that they would oppose any budget that falls short on security spending. Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) and other GOP leaders have tried to address their problems, but defense hawks say they’re frustrated that leadership has repeatedly pushed off getting a solution firmly into place.

“I don’t like it,” said Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.). “I like what we had last week when we left here on Thursday.”

When the House left town last week, Republicans were expected to add an amendment that would increase the so-called Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) fund for their fiscal 2016 budget to $96 billion, and require no offsets.

Defense hawks had expected that change to be put into place when the Budget Committee marked up Chairman Tom Price’s (R-Ga.) budget last week. But despite interventions from both Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), several fiscal hawks on the Budget Committee declined to endorse the proposal, and the budget passed out of the panel without the change to appease defense hawks.

Now, GOP leaders are going forward with a strategy that will put both the original Price budget, and the amended budget with more defense spending, on the floor. Under that maneuver, the budget that gets the most votes on the floor will become the House budget, even if both pass.

That plan puts more pressure on defense hawks, who now have more work to do to ensure that the budget with the higher defense spending gets the most votes.

“If it’s what we got, it’s what we got,” Hunter told The Hill. “What I don’t like is having something done when we leave and then having to change.”

Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.), one of the key vote counters on the GOP side, said he sympathized with the defense hawks’ frustration. But he said that Republicans would have to band together to ensure that the House didn’t face the embarrassing scenario of not passing a budget.

“I think there’s some frustration,” Ross said, before adding: “When you look at the alternatives, you’ve got to pick one of them. ‘No’ is not going to be an appropriate answer.”

Other senior members of the House Armed Services Committee made it clear that they would work to ensure that the amended version of the Price budget with more spending on defense passed on the floor, no matter what that required.

Defense hawks huddled to discuss the budget state of play on Monday, and plan to meet again on Tuesday, Hunter said. Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), who organized the letter of 70 defense hawks, said last week that he would push to ensure that the GOP budget had the higher defense spending.

“I’m not really excited about making up for base deficiencies with OCO, but I think it’s the best alternative so I’m going to encourage people to vote for that,” said Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas).

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), also an Armed Services Committee member, said he thought that both versions of the Price budget used too many gimmicks to fund defense. But given a choice, he said he’d reluctantly back the version with the most money for defense funding.

“It doesn’t do any good to be financially responsible if you’re dead,” Brooks said.