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Bookies in the UK recently suspended betting that the Duchess of Cambridge would have another baby next year given a flurry of wagers following recent public appearances. Increasingly, it looks like political watchers of Washington could do the same as the odds of Congress and the White House agreeing on a way to fund the government for the next fiscal year grow longer by the day.
The good news is that a shutdown appears unlikely. Few want to repeat the no-win mistakes of the past that hurt all parties and taxpayers alike.
The bad news is that a series of continuous ‘stopgap’ spending bills could easily go on from now until the presidential election.
Like a swirling vortex extending from the clouds of a tornado, the president’s border wall is bringing down everything in its path, whether it is related to the wall or not. In past years, compromise was able to be reached enough so that both sides could claim victory. But following President Trump’s emergency declaration which allowed for pilfering of money from the military for the wall, the dispute seems unlikely to be resolved this time around.
The chairman of the Senate appropriations committee has said the Hill could end up with ongoing continuing resolutions (CRs) that freeze spending at last year’s levels and set other limits and restrictions on purchases that uniquely harm the US military. Even though Pres. Trump had taken defense and other dollars previously for the wall, his latest gambit to raid a whopping $3.6 billion from military base construction projects is encountering resistance from all sides. That is because this money was not authorized by Congress for non-military purposes. And it will stop work at 127 military construction projects in 23 states, 3 territories and 19 allied countries.
Highlights of the 43 base projects affected here at home include:
A pier and maintenance facility , Washington.
Boiler replacement in Alaska whose failure is “imminent” and could cause the evacuation of an entire base, as by NBC News.
Child development center at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.
Elementary school replacement in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
West Coast flight simulator to train pilots in how to in California.
Not only are troops and their families affected by the shifting of funds for the wall, the entire Defense Department would be harmed under the larger stopgap spending bill at lower levels. This lack of on-time funding throws the government’s largest purchaser into a tailspin and raises costs to the taxpayer for inefficiency.
For the US Army, it means that nearly 100 plans to modernize equipment will simply not happen. Commanders will slow or eliminate training, which will cause readiness to decline. Some soldiers will have to be laid off given the reduced head count required by fewer dollars being available.
The commander of US Forces in Korea said he cannot “overstate the impact of a continuing resolution at every level, and most importantly, those that should have to worry about it least, we put it on their backs, and that’s on soldiers and families because we did not have an on-time appropriation.”
For the US Navy, a series of spending freeze bills or, worse, a full-year continuing resolution impacts everything from ships to people. Specifically, Navy leaders have said they would be unable to buy an additional submarine or destroyer currently on the books. Same with a new helicopter replacement system and frigate. The highly-trained depot maintenance workforce will move on to other jobs and industries in the face of such uncertainty.
This all translates into the Pentagon being unable to go all-in on its new defense strategy. As one commander put it in April:
“I had a meeting yesterday with the Top Gun commandeering officer and two lieutenants that are on his staff. And we went over in a classified setting the pacing threat. We went over what we had planned in 2018, what was budgeted in 2019, what we are requesting in 2020, where we are going in 2021.
If we go back to a CR, that stuff gets blown up. And what we are transmitting to those lieutenants is that we are not committed to winning.”
Worst of all, however, is the “crushing impact on morale for the forward-deployed force” by spending freezes. Not just the squeeze put on servicemembers and their families, but also the knowledge that this outcome is entirely avoidable. The Secretary of the Navy said it best, noting “a CR will knock us off our game. It’ll be the most painful thing we’ve had, and what’s more bizarre to me is that it will be self-induced.”
It increasingly looks like troops and their families will pay the heaviest price — literally and figuratively — for the president’s border wall now that it has engulfed negotiations for all federal spending. The decision to treat the defense budget as a piggy bank and raid $3.6 billion in military construction for the wall is now throwing $1.3 trillion for all federal agencies into question. Halted base projects, wasteful spending, reduced readiness, deteriorated morale, and deferred modernization are just some of the consequences of looting defense to solve immigration.
It looks like the troops will pay the heaviest price for the president’s border wall now that it has engulfed negotiations for all federal spending.
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