The House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee yesterday released its draft of the Fiscal Year 2016 Defense Appropriations bill, which the subcommittee will mark up today. Notably, the draft would prohibit any money from being transferred into the Sea-Based Deterrent Fund. “None of the funds provided in this or any other Act may be transferred to the National Sea Based Deterrent Fund,” the draft states. The House version of the FY 2016 National Defense Authorization Act would authorize up to $1.4 billion from Navy research and development funds into the Sea-Based Deterrent Fund.
Instead, the draft defense appropriations bill would finance the Ohio-class Replacement through a $67.9 billion defense-wide R&D account. More broadly, the subcommittee draft seeks to provide $578.6 billion in discretionary defense spending for FY 2016, which would be about $26 billion less than the House version of the FY 2016 National Defense Authorization Act, but $24.4 billion above the FY 2015-enacted level, and $800 million above President Barack Obama’s FY 2016 budget request. If adopted, the draft would appropriate $88.4 billion in sequester-proof emergency war funds, which is $0.8 billion less than the amount outlined in the House bill.