Pentagon chief: Stopgap funding measure would have devastating impact on military

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sent letters over the weekend to top House and Senate appropriations leaders arguing a long-term continuing resolution (CR) funding bill would impose a “litany of difficulties” on the military.

Congress returns to session this week and is looking to pass a CR to keep the government funded through March, but Austin said an extended version of the temporary measure would “set us significantly behind” in meeting the challenges from China and the ongoing wars in Europe and the Middle East.

“These actions subject service members and their families to unnecessary stress, empower our adversaries, misalign billions of dollars, damage our readiness, and impede our ability to react to emergent events,” Austin wrote. “We have already lost valuable time, having operated under 48 CRs for a total of almost five years since 2011. We cannot buy back this time, but we can stop digging the hole.”

The separate letters, signed Sept. 7, were addressed to Reps. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), chair of the House Appropriations Committee; and Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the committee’s ranking member; along with Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), chair of the Senate Committee on Appropriations; and its ranking member Susan Collins (R-Maine).

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has tied a CR to stricter proof-of-citizenship requirements for voters, which has set up a showdown with Senate Democrats opposed to the measure.

Congress faces a Sept. 30 deadline to keep the government funded, but lawmakers are still far from ready to pass a full slate of appropriations bills for federal agencies, making a CR the best option to temporarily keep the money flowing.

Deadlock in Congress kept the government on a CR well past the deadline for fiscal 2024, which impacted Defense Department operations until it was fully funded last March.

The Pentagon has requested a $849.8 billion budget request for fiscal 2025 and argues operating under those levels once the September deadline has passed impacts an array of programs, services and projects.

Austin said a long-term CR would damage military recruitment efforts, which are already struggling with record-low numbers, and that temporary funding would “forego vital investments in our defense industrial base” and damage a number of other programs from military construction to nuclear weapons modernization and advanced drone building.

But Austin expressed greater concern with failing to pass appropriations bills by Jan. 1 because the federal government would be approaching a limitation set by the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 reached between President Biden and House Republicans last year.

Under that act, a failure to pass full government funding by January will start a process to reduce the discretionary spending limits for national security by 1 percent below fiscal 2023 levels, which Austin said could force the Pentagon to lose $42 billion from the 2025 budget request.

If the federal government is still under a CR by the legislation’s deadline of April 30, the Defense Department could face those cuts.

“The repercussions of Congress failing to pass regular appropriations legislation for the first half of [fiscal] 2025 would be devastating to our readiness and ability to execute the National Defense Strategy,” Austin wrote in the letters.

The White House has also expressed concerns with a six-month CR, as has DeLauro in the House, who argued it would be better to end the stopgap funding in December.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a letter to his colleagues on Sunday that he supports a temporary CR but that it must be done “in a bipartisan way.”

“We will not let poison pills or Republican extremism put funding for critical programs at risk,” he wrote.