The Hill’s Defense & National Security — House Dems unveil defense spending proposals

Jordan Williams
·7 min read

The House Appropriation committee released the text of two bills that would set appropriations levels for defense spending and military construction programs.

We’ll break down the bill, plus talk about why the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol postponed its Wednesday hearing.

This is Defense & National Security, your nightly guide to the latest developments at the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill and beyond. For The Hill, I’m Jordan Williams. A friend forward this newsletter to you? Subscribe here.

Democrats release opening bid for defense spending

The House Appropriations Committee unveiled its opening bid for defense spending on Tuesday, granting the Pentagon $761.68 billion for fiscal year 2023.

The topline of its proposed fiscal year 2023 defense funding bill, would represent $32 billion increase over fiscal year 2022 funding levels.

The agency would receive another $15.1 billion for military construction programs under a separate bill that would appropriate a total of $314.1 billion for military construction and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.

  • The proposed defense bill sets aside $173.1 billion for military personnel, which includes support for a 4.6 percent military pay raise

  • It also includes $269.3 billion in operations and maintenance, as well as
    $143.9 billion for procurement and $131.7 billion for research, development, testing and evaluation.

The measure also allocates $300 million for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, to provide support and assistance to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. It also provides $1.3 billion for international security cooperation programs, of which $300 million would go to allies and partners facing Russian aggression.

Separately, the military construction bill would allocate roughly $274 million for child development centers, $2.1 billion for family housing, $1 billion for constructing or renovating Guard and Reserve Facilities, and $510 million for housing unaccompanied personnel at various locations.

  • That bill also includes $135 billion in discretionary spending for the VA, which was $48 million below what Biden requested for the agency.

  • It also includes $128.1 billion in advance fiscal year 2024 funding for veterans’ medical care.

An interesting provision: The defense appropriations bill includes a provision that would prevent the Pentagon from denying leave to active duty servicemembers and civilian employees who are seeking abortions.

The change comes as the nation braces for the potential rolling back of abortion rights as the Supreme Court appears poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established the constitutional right to abortion.

The Pentagon hasn’t spoken at length about how rolling back abortion rights would impact its recruitment of women, who are already less likely to enter the military. Advocates and lawmakers have been pushing the Pentagon to shield service members’ access to abortions, mainly by protecting leave for seeking the procedure.

Coming up next: The Defense subcommittee will have a closed markup tomorrow morning, while the Military Construction subcommittee will hold an open markup in the afternoon.

Next Wednesday, the full Appropriations committee will hold an open markup on the defense bill on June 22 at 10 a.m., and then a markup for the military construction and VA bill on June 23 at 10 a.m.

On the NDAA front: The House and Senate Armed Services committees have been marking up their versions of the Fiscal Year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. This bill sets policy and toplines for defense spending, but does not provide budget authority like an appropriations bill.

The subcommittees of the House Armed Services Committee finished their markups last week, with a full committee markup scheduled for June 22.

Meanwhile, the subcommittees of the Senate Armed Services Committee spent Monday and Tuesday marking up their version of the NDAA, mostly behind closed doors. The full committee is expected to hold a closed markup on Wednesday and Thursday, if needed.

JAN. 6 PANEL POSTPONES WEDNESDAY HEARING 

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol has postponed its Wednesday hearing slated to review former President Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department to investigate his unfounded claims of election fraud.

In an advisory, the committee said its scheduled hearing on Thursday would still take place but provided no other details.

What’s behind the decision? “There’s no big deal, but I’ll tell you the putting together the video and exhibits is an exhausting exercise for our very small video staff. So we’re trying to — we were going to have 1-2-3 in one week and it’s just it’s too much to put it all together. So we’re trying to give them a little room to do their technical work, is mainly it,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), one of the committee’s members, said on “Morning Joe” on Tuesday.

The expected witnesses: Former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, his deputy Richard Donoghue and Steven Engel, then the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, were all expected to appear before the committee on Wednesday.

Rosen and Donoghue were some of the committee’s earliest witnesses to voluntarily testify before the panel’s investigators and also spoke with the Senate Judiciary Committee for a report it released in October.

Read the full story here.

Taking helm of the Coast Guard

Adm. Linda Fagan, the new leader of the Coast Guard and the first woman in American history to head a military service, was, by her own account, not the most impressive cadet while coming up in the Coast Guard Academy.

“When I went over for the interview” — for her current position earlier this year with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks — “one of them asked: ‘Hey, did you ever think as a cadet you could be here interviewing to be commandant?’ I laughed. I was like, I was kind of an unremarkable cadet, I was just kind of average academically. … It was a means to an end to serve as an officer,” Fagan told The Hill in a recent interview.

Those means have culminated in her position as the 27th leader of the Coast Guard, a role made official earlier this month in a change-of-command ceremony in Washington, D.C.

Read the full story here.

ON TAP TOMORROW

  • Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will head a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels

  • The National Defense Industrial Association will begin the 2022 Human Systems Conference at 8 a.m.

  • Federal Computer Wek will hold an event on “DoD Cloud: An Evolving Strategy” at 8:30 a.m.

  • The National Training and Simulation Association will begin the 2022 Training & Simulation Industry Symposium at 8:30 a.m.

  • The Stimson Center will hold a discussion on “Lethal and Effective: Marine Corps Force Design 2030 and U.S. – Japan Defense Cooperation” at 9 a.m.

  • The Atlantic Council will hold a conversation on “Allied resolve: NATO perspectives on the Russian invasion of Ukraine” at 10 a.m.

  • The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments will hold a discussion on “Deterrence and Defense in the Baltic Region: New Realities” at 10 a.m.

  • The Hudson Institute will host “The Ambassadors Series: A Conversation with Swedish Ambassador Karin Olofsdotter” at 12 p.m.

HOUSE

  • The Foreign Affairs Committee will hold a classified briefing on the Evolution of U.S. Policy Toward Afghanistan from 2017 Through August 2021 at 9 a.m.

  • The Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense will hold a closed markup of its appropriations bill at 9:30 a.m.

  • The Veterans Affairs’ Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity will hold a hearing “Reviewing President Biden’s Strategy to Reduce Veteran Suicide by Addressing Economic Risk Factors” at 9:30 a.m.

  • The Homeland Subcommittee on Intelligence and Counterterrorism will hold a hearing on “Current Status of ISIS and Al Qaeda” at 10 a.m.

  • The Subcommittee on Appropriations Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies will hold a markup of its appropriations bill at 1 p.m.

SENATE

  • The Armed Services Committee will hold a closed markup of the Fiscal Year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act at 9:30 a.m.

  • The Foreign Relations Committee will receive a closed briefing on Iran’s nuclear program and U.S. Strategy at 10:30 a.m.

  • The Intelligence Committee will receive a closed briefing on Intelligence Matters at 2:30 p.m.

WHAT WE’RE READING

That’s it for today. Check out The Hill’s Defense and National Security pages for the latest coverage. See you tomorrow!

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