House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is calling for House Democrats to vote against a GOP defense spending bill this week that holds to sequestration spending limits, except for a boost to the war fund.
“Once again, I am writing to underscore the urgent need for House Democrats to support the President’s path to lifting the sequester by urging a ‘No’ vote on the Republican Defense Appropriations bill,” Pelosi wrote in a letter to members of her caucus.
The defense appropriations bill, Pelosi said, is “bad budgeting and harmful to military planning.”
House lawmakers begin consideration of the bill Wednesday, with a final vote expected by the end of the week.
{mosads}While the bill matches the spending level President Obama requested for the Pentagon, it allots $38 billion more for an off-budget war fund at the Pentagon that has exclusively paid for overseas U.S. military operations.
Republicans want to pump up the war fund in order to raise defense spending, circumventing a budget cap imposed by a 2011 law. Democrats call the move a budget “gimmick” and seek to raise both military and nonmilitary spending levels.
The White House issued a veto threat for the bill on Tuesday.
“House Democrats’ sustaining of the President’s veto on unacceptably damaging appropriations bills will more forcefully bring Republicans to the table,” Pelosi said.
That move, in combination with a threat from Senate Democrats to block GOP spending bills, is the key to “unlocking sequestration,” she added.
Democrats have generally remained united so far in opposing GOP appropriations bills, but some have defected on the bills that have passed.
For legislation funding military construction projects and the Department of Veterans Affairs, for example, 19 Democrats voted in favor of the GOP-sponsored bill.