WASHINGTON — The Senate Appropriations Committee’s new defense spending bill would add $4 billion to the Navy budget — money the Navy did not seek and much of which the Armed Services and House Appropriations panels did not approve — for warships built largely by the constituents of senior appropriators.
The fiscal 2023 bill requires the Navy to spend that $4 billion to build all or part of a destroyer, two amphibious ships, a cargo vessel and several troop-ferrying hovercrafts. None of that added spending was requested in the president’s budget. Nor was any of it on the Navy’s list of “unfunded priorities” that did not make the administration’s budget.
The House’s companion defense spending bill would not fund any of the additional money. And the Senate and House National Defense Authorization Acts, or NDAAs, authorized only some of it.
