The Senate Armed Services chairman last week argued the White House Naval budget request shortchanges regular annual appropriations by wrongly assuming gaps will be filled via reconciliation.
“I must say, I am deeply disappointed with the administration’s fiscal year 2026 budget request for the Navy,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said in his opening statement during a hearing of Navy Department officials.
“In particular, I’m disturbed about the shipbuilding account, which plummeted to $20.8 billion from last year’s $37 billion…the shortfall reflects efforts to game the budget in anticipation of congressional reconciliation funds, which were intended as supplemental, not a substitute,” Wicker went on to say.
Wicker said because the administration assumes reconciliation will pay for some of these regular appropriations, despite congressional intent, its fiscal ‘26 Navy budget request does not include procurement of Virginia-class submarines (SSNs).
The fiscal ‘26 request does not include attack submarines, Wicker said. The administration is relying on the one Virginia-class boat proposed in the reconciliation bill, even though both the House and Senate versions recommend the $4.6 billion for an SSN with language that it should be used for a “second” vessel, as they expected another one in the baseline fiscal ‘26 budget request, he added.
Falling back to the single submarine in the reconciliation proposal, Wicker argued this “would upend the multi- year negotiations that presume nine boats over five years instead of eight. It jeopardizes industrial base recovery.”
Likewise, Wicker also said the Columbia-class ballistic missile program is underfunded by $4 billion in the fiscal 2026 request.
The chairman’s statements also revealed that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) firmly “opposes” the committee’s support for the Shipbuilder Accountability and Workforce Support (SAWS) initiative.
He argued that SAWS would otherwise enable two SSNs and one Columbia-class submarine to be produced annually.
“Yet OMB opposes this and has created the crisis we now face. There’s still time to implement SAWS, and I urge action to avoid further damage.”
In January, Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) CEO Chris Kastner said the then-incoming Trump administration was probably more receptive to things like the SAWS proposal, developed by the Navy and industry. The initiative aims to redirect funds previously obligated for future submarines to instead be used to boost current shipbuilder workforce wages and incentives that it expects would retain and improve the workforce, leading to better construction efficiency.
In March, Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the new director of OMB Russel Vought seemed open to the SAWS initiative.
The Senate drafted up their own reconciliation bill this week. It is unclear when they will vote on it.
A version of this story first ran in Exchange Monitor affiliate Defense Daily.