Senate GOP appropriators are casting doubt on the feasibility of using the party-line reconciliation process to inject hundreds of billions more into the nation’s military.
While they support funneling more money to the Pentagon, the lawmakers indicated reconciliation would be an uphill climb given Republicans’ razor-thin majorities. However, Republican appropriators also say the process may be the only way to reach President Donald Trump’s lofty goal of a $1.5 trillion defense budget.
“Probably the only way to get it is through reconciliation,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), a senior appropriator and a member of leadership, said Thursday. “That’d be a big lift… The first one we did was pretty difficult.”
