The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee introduced a continuing resolution today that would fund the government through April 28, 2017, at last fiscal year’s spending levels – with several critical exceptions, among them a provision that would allow work to continue uninterrupted on designing the Ohio Replacement Program ballistic missile submarines.
So-called “clean” continuing resolutions require money in the new fiscal year to be spent exactly how it was in the previous year, line by line. In the Navy’s case, continuing Fiscal Year 2016 spending in FY 2017 would have resulted in a slew of problems, chief among them being that the Ohio Replacement Program, also called the Columbia-class SSBN, was set to move from research and development funding into shipbuilding and conversion funding.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) proposed a CR with a slew of provisions that would alter how FY 2016’s of $1.07-trillion topline gets spent.
Noting the bill “includes provisions needed to prevent catastrophic, irreversible, or detrimental changes to government programs, to support our national security, and to ensure good government,” Rogers said in a press release Tuesday night that his legislation would allow “funding to be used for the Ohio Class Submarine Replacement program to avoid delays that would increase costs.”
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