Federal Budget Impasse Threatens Military Programs, Benefits
In 2025, the federal government is having no better luck passing a defense budget than it did the year before. In a letter to Congress, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned that passing a temporary spending bill instead of the full 2025 budget would severely harm the Defense Department.
The potential fallout from resorting to a continuing resolution instead of passing a full defense budget could include “thousands” of DoD programs and benefits.
Conflicts Cost Money
The Secretary of Defense has gone on the record about the dangers of not fully funding the DoD, noting, “Asking the department to compete with (China), let alone manage conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, while under a lengthy CR, ties our hands behind our back while expecting us to be agile and to accelerate progress,” said Austin in a letter to leaders of the House and Senate appropriations committees.
Secretary Austin’s remarks are undoubtedly informed by struggles in 2024 to keep the federal government open as House factions repeatedly attempted to insert culture war riders that had no bearing on national defense into the budget.
Those efforts were largely defeated, and the government eventually got a full operating budget, but the fallout from the culture war issues resulted in serious questions about junior troops’ ability to meet basic needs in the meantime.
In 2024, members of political factions in the House and Senate seemed to think the possibility of Pride flags and drag shows on federal installations was as important as whether military housing programs got funded on time or whether junior troops could feed their families.
In 2025, one of the issues threatening junior troops’ bottom line?
Even as the house debates a six-month continuing resolution in spite of what the Secretary of Defense recommends, some there want to make that continuing resolution dependent on, according to the Associated Press, “requiring states to obtain proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, when registering a person to vote.”
A Looming Deadline
As reported by the Associated Press, lawmakers “must approve a stop-gap spending bill before the end of the budget year on Sept. 30 to avoid a government shutdown just a few weeks before voters go to the polls and elect the next president.”
According to SecDef Austin, approving a temporary stop-gap measure instead “would cut defense spending by more than $6 billion compared to the 2025 spending proposal. And it would take money from key new priorities while overfunding programs that no longer need it.”
Why is the continuing resolution approach a bad idea? One reason is that new programs can’t be initiated with temporary funds. Approving a temporary spending measure would take more than $4 billion away from new military housing projects, among other things.
Then there’s the effect on readiness; AP reports that temporary spending measures slow progress on key infrastructure and weapons programs.
What happens if the government is temporarily funded as it was in 2024? According to the Secretary of Defense (as quoted by the Associated Press), this will create “unnecessary stress, empower our adversaries, misalign billions of dollars, damage our readiness, and impede our ability to react to emergent events.”
Congress must pass a budget, whether temporary or permanent, by September 30, 2024, to avoid a government shutdown. This is an ongoing story.
About the author
Editor-in-Chief Joe Wallace is a 13-year veteran of the United States Air Force and a former reporter/editor for Air Force Television News and the Pentagon Channel. His freelance work includes contract work for Motorola, VALoans.com, and Credit Karma. He is co-founder of Dim Art House in Springfield, Illinois, and spends his non-writing time as an abstract painter, independent publisher, and occasional filmmaker.
