In a remarkable return to "regular order", Congress is moving at the speed of heat toward completing the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act and a supportive FY 2019 defense appropriations bill. It actually has a shot at completing both of them on time. There are a few differences among the President's request and the respective House (HASC/HAC) and Senate (SASC/SAC) bills but these are not irreconcilable. Once complete, the Pentagon will realize the second year of the largest budget bump since 9/11.
The John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019
- Both the full House and Senate have completed their work on this policy-oriented portion of the Congressional budget process. Conference committee members from the two houses are now being appointed to deal with the differences between the two bills. A consensus bill should be ready for vote and the President's signature by early August. Members are motivated to complete their work while the bill's namesake is still able to appreciate the gesture.
- There are very few monetary differences in the two versions, both of which adhere to the President's topline request which itself conforms to this spring's budget topline deal of $716B in total "defense" discretionary spending for FY19 (includes OCO and DoE). The very minor program dollar differences between the two versions are easily reconcilable in conference and, to be truthful, are less relevant to what actually gets bought than what the appropriators decide. For example, the House version of the NDAA authorizes 77 F-35s as requested by the White House while the Senate version authorizes only 75 jets, putting the difference in dollars into spare parts procurement. Meanwhile, the House and Senate appropriators want to buy 93 and 89 jets respectively. In the end DoD is likely to get 91 F-35s.
- The main focus of the conferees will be to resolve the policy differences between the two versions and to satisfy the Administration on issues that it has stated that it objects to. Items of discussion will include sanctions on Chinese telecom ZTE, internal DoD processes, military construction at Guantanamo, selling F35s to Turkey, etc.
FY 2019 Department of Defense Appropriations Act
- Bipartisan support. The full House approved its version of the FY19 Defense appropriation by a vote of 359-49 on June 28 just as the Senate Appropriations Committee sent its version to the floor by a vote of 30-1. The floor vote on the Senate version should occur before August and will be quickly followed by a conference with the House to deal with differences, which, once again, do not appear to be large. Given that the Senate is going to spend much of August in session, there is good reason to believe that the bill could be signed by the President before 1 October for the first time in at least a dozen years.
- Major Differences Among the Appropriations Bills
- Unlike the Administration's and House versions, the Senate version essentially adds $3.8B in budget authority through rescissions of slow-to-execute FY 2018 programs. Much of this money is proposed to go into myriad FY19 RDT&E programs. Significant differences between the Senate version and both the House and PresBud versions include: ships (cable, amphib and JHSV) (+$825M), BA's AH-64 Apache (+623M), hypersonics R&D (+$569M), test ranges (+$285M), light attack aircraft (+$260M), directed energy ($150M), LMT's THAAD ($140M), NOC's Global Hawk (+$100M), Future vertical lift (+$75M).
- The House version reflects an increased emphasis on maintenance and readiness compared to the Administration as well as the influence of Kay Granger, chair of HAC-D and representative from Texas, home of Lockheed Aero and Bell. Differences from the PresBud include 16 additional F-35s (93 vice 77) (+$1.7B), additional ground logistics (+$1.3B), facilities sustainment (+$1B), +10 C-130Js (+$1B), Littoral Combat Ships (+$910M), JSTARS ($623M), V22s (+$310M). Most of these programs see increases but smaller in the Senate version compared to the PresBud.
