The White House
threatened Tuesday to veto the House defense budget for next year, the one that
spends more than the Pentagon and has asked for
and breaks the Budget Control Act deal agreed to last year.
The eight-page memo [pdf] from the Office of Management and Budget issuing the threat has a litany of strong objections to the bill, summed up here:
While there are a number of areas of agreement with the Committee, the Administration has serious concerns with provisions that: (1) depart from the President's fiscal year (FY) 2013 Budget request—in particular, increases to the topline request for the base budget; (2) constrain the ability of the Armed Forces to carry out their missions consistent with the new defense strategy; or (3) impede the ability of the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Energy to make and implement management decisions that eliminate unnecessary overhead or programs to ensure scarce resources are directed to the highest priorities for the national security. The overall funding level supported by H.R. 4310 would violate the Budget Control Act of 2011, the bipartisan agreement reached between the Congress and the President to put the Nation on a sustainable fiscal course. If the cumulative effects of the bill impede the ability of the Administration to execute the new defense strategy and to properly direct scarce resources, the President's senior advisors would recommend to the President that he veto the bill.
The House Republicans, totally ignoring the fact that
the public wants to see deep defense spending cuts, will go forward on Thursday with this bill that would spend $8 billion more than what Congress and President Obama agreed to last August in the Budget Control Act. It would limit the president's ability to retire certain military hardware, aircraft, ships and a version of the Global Hawk drone as well as his ability to implement a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia. It would, of course, punish the gays by banning same-sex marriages on military installations. And it would, insanely, create an absolutely unnecessary and ridiculous missile defense site on the East Coast.
The White House is concerned with the restrictions placed on the commander-in-chief (I wonder what Mitt Romney thinks about them?) and the Pentagon is incensed about the possibility of having to hang onto and continue to maintain obsolete hardware, at the expense of other programs, and at the expense of implementing the Pentagon's new defense strategy.
The House will likely vote on, and pass, the defense budget on Thursday. The Senate won't pass it, and the White House would veto it. The American public will hate it. And the House will take up more of the tiny bit of time they actually spend working not on jobs but on another dead-end political statement.
