The full Senate is expected to consider today a FY2011 Continuing Resolution (CR) for the federal government, introduced by the Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC) that is $51 billion less than the presidents’ request.  The SAC bill provides a much higher level of funding than the House-passed bill, which reduces the president’s total budget request by $100 billion, and is $61 billion lower than the FY2010 enacted level.  The SAC bill cuts some of the same nondefense programs as the House bill (e.g., nuclear nonproliferation, State/foreign operations, and domestic preparedness) but by a lesser amount.  However, the SAC bill ejects many of the House-proposed reductions to environmental, infrastructure, education programs.

Like the house-passed bill, the SAC proposal includes separate appropriations for Department of Defense (DOD) accounts.  However, the SAC bill provides $513.6 billion for DoD (excluding Military Construction), $2.13 billion less than the House bill.  According to the SAC press release, the additional reductions come from the Committee’s assumptions of the effect of revised inflation assumptions and the civilian pay freeze.  This almost assures that the DoD base budget funding level in a final FY2011 agreement could be $17 billion lower than the president’s request.  Secretary Gates has been pressing Congress to restrain their defense cuts to about $9 billion.