House debate on defense bill spending finds one bit of bipartisan light

Is Congress a serious legislative body or not?

Last week the House again flunked that test, this time with the fiscal 2013 defense appropriations bill.

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An August 2011 bipartisan agreement headed off the United States defaulting on its debt when Congress passed the Budget Control Act (BCA), which established caps on fiscal 2013 spending on defense and non-defense activities. It was a first step toward overall debt reduction by cutting some $1 trillion from previously planned spending over the next 10 years.

Congress wrote into the BCA an unusual provision rightly titled “Enforcement of Discretionary Spending Caps,” which was supposed to make sure that the caps for fiscal 2013 spending levels could not be changed.

The BCA said “any bill . . . that would cause the discretionary spending limits . . . [in the BCA] to be exceeded” would “not be in order in the House.” That meant any member could make a point of order and halt any such bill’s consideration.

Or so you would think.

The bill brought to the floor last week exceeded the BCA cap for defense by $7.5 billion. No one made a point of order.

However, Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) noted during the early debate “that a new point of order was created under” BCA and “under that part of the act . . . the entire bill is technically out of order because the entire bill exceeds the BCA caps by $7.5 billion.”

Mulvaney raised the issue while arguing for one of his own proposed amendments to the bill that was ruled out of order because it exceeded a spending cap set by the House Budget Committee. He pointed out the irony that upholding a point of order against his amendment would prevent “something that everyone has supported in the past, a good governance issue, while allowing the entire bill, which also violates the same point of order, to proceed.”

That wasn’t the only effort to get the bill back to the BCA limits. Democratic Reps. Barbara Lee (Calif)., Chris Van Hollen (Md.) and Adam Smith (Wash.) sponsored an amendment that reduced the fiscal 2013 defense bill by $7.6 billion. As Lee put it, “A deal is a deal. While many of us did not support the discretionary caps under the Budget Control Act, our amendment simply brings Pentagon spending in line with the law.” As written, she said, “not a single penny would come from active duty and National Guard personnel accounts or from the Defense Health Program.”

Van Hollen noted that the BCA defense cap had been supported by the Republican chairmen of the House Budget, Armed Services and Appropriations committees. He quoted Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.), who last year said, “Tough choices will have to be made, particularly when it comes to defense and national security priorities, but shared sacrifice will bring shared results.”

Calling the defense bill a “violation of that [2011] bipartisan agreement,” Van Hollen said, “Because this bill dramatically increased that level above what was requested — the reality is the other bills that are coming through the Appropriations Committee are taking very deep cuts — deep cuts to education, deep cuts to health-care programs.”