Ohio’s Senators tour Wright-Patt as budget pressures mount

Ohio’s two U.S. senators say a federal government shut down is unlikely next month, but added the prospect of keeping spending levels at last year’s rate could stay in place beyond a late April deadline to reach a budget deal.

Five U.S. senators, including Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, were joined by John Boozman, R-Ark., and Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, on a tour Friday of Wright-Patterson.

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Brown said he has lobbied newly installed Secretary of Defense James Mattis to open a Defense Innovation Unit-Experimental at the base. Portman said Wright-Patterson would likely fare well if the Pentagon pushed a new round of base consolidation because of its key headquarters and critical Air Force functions.

Brown, co-chairman with Boozman of the Senate Air Force Caucus, said he wanted to emphasize the work Wright-Patterson does for national security to key lawmakers who make decisions impacting the military.

“Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in my mind it’s the most important Air Force Base in the country,” he said at a press conference on base with Portman and Boozman.

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In Washington, lawmakers are trying to reach a spending deal to avoid a partial federal government shutdown April 28, when the latest stop-gap measure — called a continuing resolution — expires. At the same time, the Pentagon has grappled with automatic spending reductions under the Budget Control Act of 2011.

President Donald Trump’s administration has asked Congress for an additional $30 billion for a $576 billion base budget the fiscal year 2017 defense spending bill, but the request faces uncertain prospects among lawmakers.

More uncertain is the fate of a fiscal year 2018 defense bill that would hike spending $54 billion to a top line of $639 billion, but would make sharp cuts elsewhere, from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to the State Department. The proposal has drawn outcries among many Democrats and others.

“I think overall on budget issues I heard for the first time from some House people recently that we may limp along with continuing resolutions into the next year,” Brown said. “I hope not. I hope we can find ways to work together to figure this out. Some days I’m optimistic, some days I’m less optimistic.”

While Portman didn’t expect a shut down, he said “it’s so early it’s hard to tell. I don’t think it benefits anybody.”

The last federal government shut down sent thousands of workers home at Wright-Patterson in 2013.

Reaching a budget deal is “really frustrating,” Boozman said. The Arkansas senator decried the amount of time spent in the past decade that the federal government has operated under continuing resolutions, which cap spending levels to the previous year.

The Air Force has warned the stop-gap spending could delay the start of dozens of programs.

Extending that spending measure “would be a huge mistake and wind up costing us significantly more money because you’re having to fund programs whether they work or not,” Boozman said. “It makes no sense at all.”

Among other stops Friday, the senators and their staffs received classified briefings at the secretive National Air and Space Intelligence Center, reviewed technology created at the Air Force Research Laboratory, and learned about post-graduate national security-related education at the Air Force Institute of Technology. They also stopped at the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, which develops and buys weapon systems.

“It’s one thing to look at it on a balance sheet, it’s another to look at it up close and personal,” said Boozman, whose state is home to Little Rock Air Force Base.

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