The House speaker’s plan to extend federal agencies’ 2024 budgets into the first six months of fiscal year 2025 faced more opposition Tuesday from inside and outside of his own party.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a letter to congressional appropriators, dated Sept. 7, that a six-month continuing resolution would put the schedule and cost of the new Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines at risk when there is already no margin left in the schedule, and have overall “devastating” impacts on the Pentagon’s programs.
“We would be forced to forgo vital investments in our defense industrial base, including the submarine and ship building bases,” Austin said in his letter. “We would lose time and money the nation cannot risk on modernization of our nuclear triad.”
Elsewhere in the bill served up by House speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.), the Department of Energy would get only one exception to the 2024 budget: permission “to sustain specialized security activities” for its defense nuclear programs.
President Joe Biden (D) already said he would veto the bill if it reached his desk. If Congress and the White House do not reach an accord on 2025 spending levels by Oct. 1, the federal government will partially shut down. Johnson had said he planned to bring the bill to the House floor for a vote this week.
Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump (R), meanwhile, urged Republicans in Congress to let spending lapse without concessions on voter ID laws favored by many in the GOP.
“If Republicans in the House, and Senate, don’t get absolute assurances on Election Security, THEY SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD WITH A CONTINUING RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET,” Trump said on Truth Social, referring to the voter ID laws coupled with the spending bill. “DON’T LET IT HAPPEN – CLOSE IT DOWN!!!”
Some House Republicans also said they’d vote no on the bill, according to the New York Times. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.) said it was a “waste of time” to vote for a continuing resolution unless Republicans know they “have a speaker, a leader that is actually going to go to battle” come March. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said he didn’t want to extend spending levels he and other Republicans deemed too low, the Times said.
On the other side of the aisle, Democrats in the Senate, including Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and chair of the Senate appropriations committee Patty Murray (D-Wash.), said in a statement they would vote against the bill if it reached the Senate.
Exchange Monitor affiliate publication Defense Daily contributed to this report from Washington.
