Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has said he would advise President Barack Obama to veto the final version of the fiscal year 2017 defense policy bill if it contains provisions that would underfund the Defense Department’s overseas war budget, DoD News reported Tuesday.
Lisa Ferdinando writes Carter said at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Exposition in Maryland that he has concerns with both versions of the proposed National Defense Authorization Act in Congress.
He said the bill contains a “raid on war funding that risks stability and gambles with war funding, jeopardizes readiness, and rejects key judgments of the department.”
Idrees Ali also reported for Reuters that Carter also noted that the Senate’s defense authorization bill has proposed to remove the defense undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics position in order to set up separate offices for research and business management.
Carter said the move to cancel that position currently held by Frank Kendall would separate manufacturing from engineering and research.
“Separating these functions makes no sense, as procurement and sustainment costs are controlled by decisions made during development,” he added.
The defense chief also called the House’s defense policy version as “another road to nowhere with uncertain chances of becoming a law,†according to a report by Hope Hodge Seck on DoD Buzz.
Carter said the House version would undo the Bipartisan Budget Act and compromise readiness due to a lack of measure to sustain training ranges in the long term, Seck wrote.
