“We have to honor our commitment to veterans, and there’s been a 119 percent increase in health care costs, and we cannot continue to take that out of the nondefense discretionary spending,” House Appropriation Chair Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said Thursday. “So that’s the nature of the conversation, there’s no final solution yet.”
But there’s a danger for Democrats even if veterans health care is walled off into a third category: that would ensure, from their perspective, an insufficient amount for the rest of the nondefense budget if they meet the National Defense Authorization Act target within the president’s overall spending ceiling.
A solution to that problem would be increasing the overall topline above the Biden request, as Senate Democrats proposed earlier this year. And so far that’s been a nonstarter for Republicans.
Vaccine mandate
At the same time, sticky policy issues have yet to be worked out. And one that’s cropped up this week with a vengeance is the Defense Department’s mandate for all servicemembers to be fully vaccinated or be discharged.
A number of top Republicans, including McCarthy, sought to include a rider in the NDAA blocking the Pentagon from enforcing the vaccine requirement. But it doesn’t appear that provision will make it into the authorization bill, despite a last-minute push from a sizable group of GOP senators led by Rand Paul of Kentucky that he said has 20 supporters.
Read More: VA health care funds, military vaccine rule gum up omnibus talks