Republicans are raising concerns about what the Trump-backed strategy to stave off next week’s government shutdown threat could mean for defense programs for the next six months.
President Trump this week touted a clean, six-month continuing resolution (CR) as one that would allow Republicans to focus more on advancing their tax agenda while “effectively freezing spending this year” for government programs. But some Republicans are raising the alarm about what the “freeze” could mean for the military as lawmakers brace for the release of text this weekend.
“I don’t like it,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a spending cardinal, told The Hill on Thursday. “I think we need an anomaly or a supplemental.”
Top GOP funding negotiators in the House have said there will be add-ons, known as anomalies, for defense in the legislation, which leaders expect to unveil this weekend. Among the proposals Republicans have discussed are funds for already authorized pay increases for junior enlisted military personnel and changes to allow more spending flexibility.
“The only anomalies we’re doing are basically anomalies from the administration,” House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told reporters this week without offering specifics. But he said some of the changes are aimed at giving the administration “the ability to deal with issues like defense.”
But he also said Republicans won’t be “adding extra money” and that lawmakers would be “staying within the limits that we have.”
“I have some of my friends, and they are my friends in the Senate that want to put millions of extra dollars. We can’t do that,” he said.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), the former head of the GOP conference and chair of the subcommittee that oversees annual defense funding, wrote in The Washington Post on Tuesday that a “truly clean” extended stopgap set at fiscal 2024 levels would be a “recipe for disaster.”
“A truly clean, full-year, continuing resolution at the level set for FY2024 would mean no new starts on critical programs the military needs to adapt to a rapidly changing battlefield, such as directed-energy drone and missile defenses,” he wrote.
McConnell, who opposed Trump’s nomination of Pete Hegseth to lead the Defense Department, also called it “alarming” that the “Pentagon’s senior-most civilian leaders” aren’t saying more about “the need to raise the defense budget’s topline — or the looming, self-inflicted harm to readiness and lethality that would come from failing to pass new, full-year defense appropriations for the first time in memory.”
For those opposing a CR, a particular fear lies in the lack of new program launches, known as starts, which means fewer new capabilities in the hands of warfighters years down the line.
That would force the United States to fall behind its adversaries, they argue, given that they wouldn’t be able to quickly respond to evolving threats, unanticipated events and emerging technological opportunities.
That issue was laid out in a nearly 400-page report to Congress, delivered in March 2024, in which a commission on reforming defense planning and budgeting recommended allowing new-start programs in certain cases when the Pentagon is operating under a CR.
“The CRs generally include a provision prohibiting new start activities, which can slow efforts to insert innovative technology in both new and current programs,” the report says.
Such a carve-out would be valuable amid the backdrop of China’s increasingly malign activities in the Indo-Pacific region, where it has threatened to bring Taiwan under its control and been involved in territorial disputes in the South China Sea. More recently, Chinese warships have been circumnavigating Australia’s coastline for more than three weeks and holding wargames near New Zealand, two unprecedented developments that have rattled the U.S. allies.
While Beijing’s military spending remains the second-largest behind Washington’s, it has the world’s largest navy, an air force that only slightly lags behind the U.S. military’s, and is in the midst of the biggest military buildup since World War II, with particular focus on advancing its nuclear weapons systems.
Should the Pentagon be forced to stretch fiscal 2024 funding levels through the rest of this year, that would mean “no money or authorization for 168 new programs — many of which are required to outcompete China in space and cyberspace,” McConnell said.
“The costs of deterring war pale in comparison to the costs of fighting one. If Congress is unwilling to make deterrent investments today, then discussions about urgency of looming threats — particularly the ‘pacing threat’ of China — carries little weight,” he argued.
Lawmakers have had to pass two continuing resolutions to keep the government afloat in fiscal 2025.
But lawmakers on both sides say a stopgap through the end of the fiscal year for defense programs would be unprecedented. There’s also concern that an extended stopgap would give the Trump administration more discretion on funding.
“There has never been a full-year CR for the Department of Defense because it is so large and so complex,” Sen. Chris Coons (Del.), top Democrat serving alongside McConnell on the defense subcommittee, told The Hill on Thursday.
“There are so many moving pieces that to give the president the scope to reprogram tens of billions of dollars all over the place at will, is to hand away the core responsibility of Congress to actually appropriate,” Coons said, adding that “the anomalies are requesting an enormous amount of discretion that I think, given what’s happened in this first month, is unwise.”
Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) was pressed by reporters Thursday over whether she is advocating for the stopgap currently being crafted to allow for new starts.
“New starts are very important, but they should be new starts that either the House or the Senate has authorized in their bills,” Collins said. “What I don’t want is a big slush fund of money that a department head decides what the new starts are going to be without authorization from Congress.”
But she also warned if the coming plan does not allow for new starts, lawmakers risk delaying “submarine production, the contracts for destroyers, all sorts of contracts won’t be signed, and that will hurt essential programs.”
House Republicans are expected to take swift action on the coming stopgap plan next week as lawmakers stare down a March 14 shutdown deadline. But Cole and other GOP negotiators have signaled openness to both sides continuing discussions toward reaching a bipartisan funding deal for individual funding bills for fiscal 2025.
“Right now, the best thing is to assure government funding all the way through September 30,” Cole said. “There’s no chance of an interruption, but the Speaker wants to continue to negotiate. We still think a deal is better than a CR. But we are going to nail down the CR.”
Democrats have come out in strong opposition to the Republican stopgap plan, however, instead pushing for a short-term funding patch, with the goal of both sides hashing out updated funding bills for the rest of the fiscal year. That means GOP leadership could face challenges in pushing through its stopgap plan next week with Republicans’ razor-thin majority.
But as some Republicans have raised the need for anomalies for defense programs, others say they’re also keeping an eye out on the potential price tag.
“I talked to the president about it,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said Thursday, after noting he hasn’t yet said he “was on board” with the plan. “I just got some questions. Is it truly going to be clean? Is appropriations going to add a bunch of amendments for the Pentagon?”
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) also said this week that he supports supplements to the CR to help defense programs but stressed the importance of government funding being frozen at current levels.
“I’m happy to give defense some of those anomalies again, so long as the overall spending level is staying flat,” he told The Hill on Tuesday.
