The House voted to extend the current Continuing Resolution (CR) that expires 17 November. If passed by the Senate, Congress will have once again succeeded in avoiding an impending government shutdown. And that is certainly a good thing. 

But pretty quickly, we’ll need to focus on where we go from here to ensure our nation’s security is protected in the very near future. 

The current House GOP funding plan includes two steps: (1) A CR that extends funding for MilCon/VA, Transportation/HUD, Agriculture/FDA and Energy/Environment to 19 January 2024, and (2) A CR that extends funding for all other government functions to 2 February 2024. Neither CR would contain any emergency supplemental funding for Israel, Ukraine, or border security.  It’s important that everyone understands that operating under a CR prevents new program starts, resulting in both programmatic delays and misaligned funding, which harms our military and our industry. For DoD, this will be 4 months of lost purchasing power, a total of over $12 billion, not including inflation. 

Under the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) passed earlier this year, if all 12 appropriations are not passed, then all agencies will be funded at FY23 levels minus a 1% penalty. If the CR extension plan is passed, two potential scenarios remain for full year funding: (1) A full year CR at FY23 levels and a 1% penalty of roughly $8 billion in FY24, or (2) All 12 appropriations are passed by the House and Senate after having their funding levels negotiated for FY24, and FY25 levels would be capped at 1% increase. Neither of these options provides the funding necessary for Defense leaders to enact the National Defense Strategy and properly prepare our warfighters for future conflicts. 

The bottom line is that given the gridlock in Washington (remember neither the House or the Senate have passed their versions of all of the appropriations bills), Congress should start working NOW on how they move forward to do their work and avoid these potentially damaging steps following the action this week.  Don’t forget that nobody believed the disastrous sequester would actually be implemented—until it was. The risk of a year-long CR for defense at the penalty level is real.  As many are doing, I implore Congress to get its act together before it’s too late.