Press Releases

Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX), ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, made the following statement on the passage of Department of Defense appropriations for FY2020:

"Today the House will appropriate essential funding for our troops and the Department of Defense. This action comes nearly three months into the fiscal year, but it is not substantially different from the version passed by the House months ago. National security funding was once again held hostage for other partisan priorities, a recurring habit in Washington, and one that has cost our military billions in lost buying power and readiness over the last decade. While I am pleased that we have averted a full year CR for the military, we cannot ignore the harm we have inflicted on our armed forces to get here.

"When the House debated the FY20 NDAA last week, a number of my colleagues were critical of the amount of resources being dedicated to the Department of Defense. They pledged to increase oversight and redouble their efforts to root out waste and abuse in the DOD budget. That is an important effort, but we should look to our own practices before we point fingers at the Pentagon. Repeated CRs are one of the most wasteful and abusive elements of the DOD budget. We cannot expect Pentagon officials to be better stewards of taxpayer resources than Congress is, and we are setting a poor example when we throw away billions for every month we impose a CR. We must do better."