No Stomach For Full-Year CR: Rep. Wittman

[nitpicker]

http://breakingdefense.com/2017/04/opposition-increases-to-full-year-continuing-resolution-rep-wittman/

No ‘Stomach’ For Full-Year CR: Rep. Wittman
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
on April 04, 2017 at 12:19 PM

NATIONAL HARBOR: More and more House members oppose another Continuing Resolution, which should compel the passage of proper defense spending bills, the House seapower chairman said here this morning. It’s a rare case where the deep divisions in the Republican party between defense hawks and budget hawks could actually smooth the workings of government instead of sabotaging them.

“I think leadership understands there’s not a stomach for a CR, short term or long term,” Rep. Rob Wittman told the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space conference. “They understand there is a significant amount of resistance to a CR, and that getting 218 votes for either a short-term or long-term CR is going to be difficult; and so I would say then, being the optimist, there’s a better than 50-50 chance there’ll be some form of omnibus or cromnibus.”
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Hitting the reset button and going back to the 2017 appropriations bill might require setting aside, at least for now, the proposed plus-ups in the Trump administration’s supplemental spending request, Wittman acknowledged. “Whatever’s reflected in the appropriations bill that at least takes us thru the end of this year,” he told reporters, “it may be you have to fluctuate some numbers there to make up for what wouldn’t be there in the supplemental.”

Let’s unpack those statements. (Hill cognoscenti can skip this paragraph). Since fiscal year 2017 began on October 1st, the government has operated on autopilot, with agencies allowed to continue spending at last year’s levels — hence the term “Continuing Resolution” — with little leeway to start new programs, cancel old ones, or make adjustments for changed circumstances, all of which require a proper appropriations bill. In ideal circumstances, Congress passes 12 such spending bills, one for defense and 11 for other agencies, but in practice some or all often get packed together in a single bill, an omnibus. A Cromnibus would be an ugly hybrid, passing proper appropriations for parts of the government — in this case, defense — while keeping the rest on a year-long CR.
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But it’s better than a year-long Continuing Resolution. “If, God forbid, the CR does pass, thing are going to happen that are very splashy and ugly, and people are going to get a brutal awakening,” Courtney said.
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At this point, even a short-term CR would force the Navy to postpone important maintenance and perhaps slow down shipbuilding.

So, I asked, what are the odds of a short-term CR, a full-year CR, or a proper defense appropriations bill? “Handicapping where we are right now is — is a folly because I have no idea where the leadership is with that,” Wittman said with a laugh. “There’s nothing in the schedule unfortunately this week for things to happen, so that leaves us out of town for two weeks, and then back for maybe four days of legislating before the curtain falls on April 28th.”
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