WASHINGTON, DC - Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX), Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee, made the following statement on the proposed Continuing Resolution to fund the military through November.
“The budget deal we reached earlier this year was intended to give our military stable and predictable funding. While the deal did not provide all the funding I believe our military needs, it made up for it with the promise of stability and predictability. A protracted CR breaks that promise. Secretary Esper has warned that a CR would ‘harm our military readiness and stifle our modernization efforts.’ His sentiments reflect those of his predecessors, both Republican and Democrat.
“Too often, our troops pay the price for protracted political fights in Washington. I had hoped that the budget deal would set us on a better course. We cannot ask the troops once again to pay for Congress’s inability to get our work done, or hold them hostage to either party’s partisan desires. Doing so would be a breach of faith with our men and women in uniform. For this reason, I will oppose the measure.”
A recent CRS report found that “DOD has started the fiscal year under a CR for 13 of the past 18 years and every year since FY2010 excluding FY2019. The amount of time DOD has operated under CR authorities during the fiscal year has tended to increase in the past 10 years and equates to a total of more than 39 months since 2010.” That means that cumulatively, DOD has spent more than three of the past nine years operating under wasteful stopgap spending measures.