Defense Budget Alert

Congress has agreed to a $2.3 trillion omnibus package for fiscal year 2021 that includes $900 billion in pandemic relief funds.

The Army would be forced to dial back modest end strength increases planned for the near-term in order to help finance a lame-duck proposal by the Trump administration to dramatically increase the size of the Navy fleet, a move that would shave 1,700 troops from a planned increase of 6,700 -- a 25% decrement between fiscal years 2021 and 2022.

Rep. Mac Thornberry (TX), the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said today the "message has been conveyed" to the White House that Congress will be prepared to override President Trump should he make good on threats to veto the fiscal year 2021 defense authorization bill.

The House and Senate are ready to proceed with a defense authorization bill that could draw a veto from President Trump because it includes a measure to remove the names of Confederate leaders from U.S. military bases and does not include a repeal of legal immunity for social media companies, according to lawmakers and staffers.

The outgoing Trump administration opposes several measures in the Senate version of the fiscal year 2021 defense spending bill, including proposed cuts to experimental weapons programs, according to a new letter from the White House Office of Management and Budget.

The Senate Appropriations Committee has expressed support for Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger's force design initiatives in the panel's version of the fiscal year 2021 defense spending bill.

The Government Accountability Office says it is unable to “assess the quality of the analysis” that led the Defense Department to claim $37 billion in efficiency-related savings because of “a lack of detailed documentation,” though it agrees DOD has made progress over previous years.

The Defense Department has slammed the door on public access to a Google-like research tool that allows users to quickly navigate the U.S. military’s unclassified and unwieldy annual budget -- now more than $700 billion and spread across scores of volumes, some thousands of pages long -- moving the important resource behind a firewall where it sits with classified research accessible to government employees only. 

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-WA) said today he remains "unconvinced" by the liberal wing of his party pushing for major cuts to the Pentagon, but stressed he is open to the debate if Democrats win unified control of the federal government.