Lauren Victoria Burke/AP
Durbin Launches Standoff Over Defense Spending ‘Gimmick’
The amendment would require a deal to lift the budget caps before the Pentagon could access $35.9 billion.
The Senate's No. 2 Democrat will fire the first shot Thursday in his party’s latest campaign against a GOP push to use unfettered war funds to get around the budget caps.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., will offer an amendment to the 2016 defense appropriations bill that would move the $35.9 billion Republicans are trying to put into the Pentagon's overseas contingency operations fund into the base budget instead. (Here’s a summary of the amendment provided by Durbin’s office.) The base budget, unlike the OCO war funding, is limited by the 2011 Budget Control Act, and under Durbin’s measure, the money would only become available upon the enactment of a new bipartisan budget agreement.
Durbin will offer that amendment as the full Senate Appropriations committee marks up the bill Thursday.
Meanwhile, Democratic leaders said they will block any vote to begin considering the 2016 defense appropriations bill on the floor so long as it contains what they, the White House and Pentagon leaders have all called the OCO “gimmick.”
Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is already warning that impasse could bring another shutdown in October; both parties are accusing each other of “holding national security hostage.”
The House is expected to vote on its version of the defense spending bill Thursday.