Two major headlines this week put Congress’ responsibilities in the spotlight

Terry Gerton Last week was the Association of the United States Army or AUSA conference, the big army defense trade show here in D.C., and it really put the defense budget back in the spotlight. But before we get into some of the modernization initiatives that came up in the course of that week, remind us where Congress left the 2027 defense authorization and appropriations bills before they all headed off for recess.

Mitchell Miller Well, they left them on a lot of desks and they are gathering dust right now because with the elections coming up, there really has not been any action related to this. And we’re talking about something that has been for months pushed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth with lawmakers here on the Hill, trying to get this $1.5 trillion proposed budget to make some progress. And each time that he has come up to the hill before they went on break. There really hasn’t been a lot of progress, to be honest. There’s still a big push to get the $350 billion in reconciliation money that would be included in this. But right now, I just am very skeptical that any of this is going to get moved forward after the elections take place.

Terry Gerton Well, Secretary Hegseth used his time at AUSA to make the case for Autonomous Warfare Command, or AutoWarCom, and a broader push into autonomous systems. What parts of that vision would Congress actually have to act on, rather than just the Pentagon moving out on its own?

Mitchell Miller Well, as you know that the president has been a big fan of the executive order and if we look at various things like for example, before you get into AutoWarCom, the president signed an executive order for the Golden Dome now he’s been able to move through a lot of different things without a lot in put from congress frankly but that is something that he’s going to need money from congress approved and appropriated for. So that’s just one aspect and then if we get to the autonomous warfare command What’s interesting about that is there’s a lot of support among defense-oriented lawmakers for doing something along these lines. They know that this is the way that military warfare is heading. However, they feel that they haven’t really been adequately consulted. And part of what the Pentagon is looking for and what Pete Hegseth is looking is a mandatory spending request that would include more than $50 billion for these unmanned systems. Now, keep in mind that in 2025, the request for a similar type of program was just over a billion dollars. So each time that the defense secretary comes to the Hill and says, this is what we want, you need to do this, we have to get it through, there’s been some real pushback, not just from Democrats, but from Republicans. Republicans are saying that they are just not being adequately notified of things, that they’re just getting the money proposed to them and saying kind of a take it or leave it approach. So congress will have to sign off on a variety of things related to the autonomous warfare command so this is not something that’s just a slam dunk

Terry Gerton And Hegseth tried to make the case that the money for AutoWarCom, along with most of the money for the Golden Dome, is in the reconciliation piece of that $1.5 trillion, $350 billion, saying that that’s got to get through in order to get these things funded. With the uncertainty of the midterms, what kind of a gamble is that?

Mitchell Miller That is a huge gamble and republican lawmakers have been telling the defense secretary that that’s a huge gamble because if anything changes with the midterm elections, and it looks like at least one chamber will likely change, that means that the $350 billion in reconciliation is not something that’s just automatic. There was even a time when before the elections were getting closer, they were having trouble with the reconciliation plan before that. You’ll recall that they didn’t get reconciliation through before they took the break before the election so that is something that I don’t think is going to realistically move forward unless there’s some very different results in the election when we get to it in November.

Terry Gerton Mitchell, what’s your sense then of the backup plan? The continuing resolution only goes through December 12th. There’s $1.5 trillion on the table here for defense. What do you think?

Mitchell Miller I think that they are going to, at some point, have to whittle this down. And, you know, I know that the administration will stick with that $1.5 trillion figure. The defense secretary will stick it as well. But the political reality will eventually set in. I mean, we already know that this $1.5 trillion proposal is well above what the past proposals were. And so that already had some reticence from Republicans even, even those who really support the military very strongly. And then. When you combine that with the fact that many Democrats are saying, wait a second, we don’t want to push this kind of money toward the Pentagon after the war with Iran, and who knows what will be happening at that point with the war, they want to get more money over into some domestic and social programs. So I just don’t see how there is any way that the administration is going to get the whole enchilada on what it wants here with defense.

Terry Gerton Mitchell Miller is Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP. Mitchell, you mentioned the war with Iran there in your last answer. And the other big news headline last week was that the Trump administration reached a deal with Russia to supply diesel to the market. Didn’t we just approve a Russian sanctions law a couple of months ago? And how is Congress reacting to this new initiative?

Mitchell Miller This has been really fascinating and you’re absolutely right. There is a lot of head scratching here on Capitol Hill in connection with this. First of all, Republicans initially said, okay, we know the election is coming up. We understand what the president is trying to do. At least some of them said that. And then you started to hear people from the GOP, as well as Democrats, of course, saying, well, wait a second, is this really going to provide any relief to American consumers? How much diesel are we talking about? They actually made the announcement in pounds rather than barrels because it sounds bigger. but as we move forward in the late last week it really all just came to a head and to your point this is what really frankly ticks off a lot of lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. We had a letter sent from six republican senators and six democratic senators saying, we just passed the legislation that imposed greater sanctions on Russia in honor of the late South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. Now, this has been completely turned on its head. The sanctions are being lifted and you’re going to actually allow Vladimir Putin to sell diesel fuel even when we know that this isn’t going to make a big difference. So this has really caused a huge political kerfuffle among lawmakers, and many of them are just telling the administration, you need to rescind this. Now, it seems to be going forward. The president has defended it and tried to mitigate the fact that it’s really all about the United States and said, well, this is for the world market. But as you know, many energy experts have said that this is really the proverbial drop in the bucket, that it could potentially help for a day or two, but it is not something that is going to be long-lasting.

Terry Gerton Right. What does this tell us then about the balance of power between the executive branch and the legislative branch? I mean, the administration is saying Treasury has this authority to issue licenses and waivers. Congress is saying, no, it’s against the law and Congress is out of session. So what can they really do about it?

Mitchell Miller At this point, you know, what i just mentioned, they can complain to the administration they could try to put political pressure on the administration to not do this. We saw political pressure for example on a different topic in connection with the live streaming of the execution which the president pulled back on. And that was in part because many Republican lawmakers as well as Democrats we’re telling the president this is not a good idea and so it’s I think what you’re seeing more broadly here is Congress is finally starting to reassert itself. And really, it’s only because of this political reality of what is happening in connection with the elections that the president’s approval rating, of course, is near record lows. And a lot of Republicans are finally saying, wait a second, I don’t think we can go in on every single thing that the President wants to do. Not to say that he doesn’t have a huge amount of control still over the Republican party, But I think what you’re seeing, again, is lawmakers on the GOP side starting to say we can’t necessarily do this. This is something that, you know, especially with foreign policy issues, the Senate really has a sense of ownership on these on this issue. And I think that’s why you’re hearing these voices getting louder.

Terry Gerton Mitchell, how does this set up the lame duck work session then? There’s going to be, there is a lot of just basic work that they need to get done, but all of this politics is going to sort of cloud the issue, isn’t it?

Mitchell Miller Absolutely. And it’s been funny because as we’ve talked about in the past, they kept saying, well, it’s kind of like the kid with the homework, right? I’ll get it done at the end of the semester or whatever. And that’s really what Congress has been doing. They kept saying well, we’ll tackle that in the lame duck session. We’ll do that in a lame duck section. Well, we’re going to have a lot of confusion about what’s happening in the lame duck session in connection with whatever happens with the elections. And I think it’s going to take at least a couple of weeks to sort that out to say, Okay, where are the party’s going now with the appropriations bills because they still need to get done. Where is the passage going to happen with the NDAA because that has to get down as it has been done for 60+ years. So I think there’s going to be a huge amount of sorting things out right after the elections and it is not going to the very a clean approach. It’s going could be very messy legislatively