House Panel Uses War Funds to Skirt Budget Limits | Military.com: A GOP-controlled House panel Tuesday approved using $37 billion in unrequested war money to match President Barack Obama's 7 percent budget boost for the military. The move came over the opposition of Democrats and the White House, who argue that domestic programs deserve equal treatment.
The Appropriations Committee action came as it approved a $579 billion Pentagon spending bill that would fund a 2.3 percent pay increase for the military and add new money to boost air reconnaissance.
The bill advances toward a floor debate later this month, even as measures that pay for the departments of Commerce, Justice, Transportation as well as Housing and Urban Development are moving ahead this week — headlong into twin administration veto threats issued on Tuesday.
The sweeping Pentagon funding measure typically enjoys widespread support, but this year's version is trapped by a broader budget involving a $1 trillion budget "cap" mandated by the return of automatic spending cuts that are the punishment for Washington's failure to replace them with other deficit-cutting policies. Such so-called sequestration cuts would reduce agency operating budgets by about $90 billion below levels originally called for by a hard-fought 2011 budget accord.
The White House has issued blanket veto threats against spending bills for the budget year beginning in October, demanding additional money for domestic programs. But there's no sign yet of negotiations between the White House and Republicans controlling Congress over ways out of the tangle, which promises to drag on until the fall or later.
