Obama NDAA Veto Strengthens White House In Budget Talks

WASHINGTON: The most intriguing assessment of President Obama’s veto yesterday of the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act comes from a Republican.

While Mackenzie Eaglen, defense expert at the American Enterprise Institute, clearly doesn’t think much of Obama’s move — citing “his intransigence at anything less than is being demanded of him” — she also concludes that he’s in a stronger position than are Republicans in part because of the veto.

“As usual, he (Obama) has the upper hand in these negotiations. Hopefully, this (veto) will reinvigorate the already-stalled budget talks underway,” Eaglen, a member of the Breaking Defense Board of Contributors, said in an email.

That helps explain why — aside from the usual partisan reaction of we must strike back because the other guy did something — defense Republicans are trying really hard to get someone in America to care about the veto of the defense policy bill.

To help get someone outside of Washington to pay attention to what really is an important measure — whichever side of the Overseas Contingency Operations funding issue you’re on — Republicans launched a Twitter campaign yesterday afternoon to stir the faithful using the hashtags #OverrideTheVeto and #FY16NDAA.

I care. Many of our readers care. Members of the Senate and House Armed Services (SASC and HASC) care. But I bet this is not going to come up in bar talk at taverns across America this evening. Without an outpouring of support from voters to override the veto, the GOP doesn’t have much of a chance. As we’ve reported, even House Republicans don’t think they can muster the votes of their own conference to try and override Obama’s veto. And a check of the hashtag OverrideTheVeto this morning didn’t show much activity,

Sen. Jack Reed, who works very closely with SASC Chairman John McCain and is normally a pretty bipartisan kind of guy on defense issues, made clear just how sharp the partisan divide is.

“I have tried to help move this process forward because our troops deserve a budget that matches their courage and sacrifice. And the (NDAA) bill itself contains many needed reforms and improvements. There is a lot we can agree on here, and if we dropped the OCO charade and got back to honest budgeting, I believe we could pass a stronger NDAA with near unanimous support,” he said in a statement. “I understand the House Republican leadership is in disarray, but they shouldn’t wait two weeks before holding a vote. Our troops should be a priority and I urge the House to hold a vote as soon as possible so we can get back to crafting a more responsible solution.”

Even Reed, the top Democrat on the SASC, couldn’t resist a shot at the chaotic and messy bunch who all claim to be members of the same party in the House.

Reed’s call for scrapping the so-called OCO gimmick was echoed by this House counterpart, the sometimes sharp-tongued and always sharp-minded Rep. Adam Smith.

“The defense bill now hangs in peril because Republicans refused to make the necessary changes to strengthen our national security. We can’t give our troops the tools needed to fight our aggressors by using a budget gimmick,” he said in a statement.

As for Republicans, they all railed against the presidential veto yesterday and today. “While the President insists on playing politics at the expense of our service-members, I will continue to fight to ensure that our men and women in uniform are provided with the resources needed to ensure the safety of this country and protect our interests abroad,” Rep. Mike Turner, chairman of the HASC tactical air and land forces subcommittee, said in a statement. Turner penned an Oct. 15 letter signed by an impressive 101 House members, calling on the crippled GOP leadership to avoid a Continuing Resolution, which would effectively slice something like $36 billion from the president’s request (which is the same amount authorized by the NDAA).

My bet is that the offending OCO funding will be dropped from the bill, since, as Sen. McCain keeps noting, this is not an appropriations bill and therefore the money per se doesn’t really matter. (This would beg the question of how everything in the bill gets funded without violating the Budget Control Act). The acquisition reforms, the personnel policies and reforms, the restrictions on program spending and the important foreign and national security really do matter.

Then we move to the government shutdown scenario in December, when presumptive Speaker Paul Ryan must decide whether to bend to the intransigents in the ill-named Freedom Caucus and expose us to global ridicule once again, or to maintain America’s credit rating, its status as a global economic power, and, ultimately, as the world’s most powerful country.