Bringing Down the House
Friday, July 20, 2012 at 3:36PM | Russell Rumbaugh Keeping up its pace on appropriations bills, the House passed the defense appropriations bill last night, and with it blew right through the BCA caps. Defense approps took a hit on an amendment, bringing it down to just above FY12 funding for defense. But because the House had already cut MILCON funding compared to last year, that means it is giving DoD less money than it did in FY12.
Furthermore, the House had also already passed Energy and Water, Homeland Security, and Commerce, Justice and Science bills, each of which includes som
e National Defense (f050) funding.* Added together, the House is already more than $6B above the BCA cap for 050 in FY13.
If these figures were passed into law (which the Senate isn’t likely to agree to), the House (and President) would need the BCA revised not just to avoid the sequester stemming from the supercommittee failure, but because they face sequester for breaching the BCA caps.
* As of July 20th, the House hasn’t yet passed Financial Services and Transportation and HUD bills, which together will likely include about $200M in 050 funding. All of the figures should be considered rough estimates as they are not official scores yet.