Kerry Presses Congress for More Power and Money To Fight ISIS

The national security crises of the past months, rattled off repeatedly by Secretary of State John Kerry and a number of senators on Tuesday, are giving a renewed urgency to the argument that diplomacy – and the federal spending required to fund it – is central to the global fight against terrorism, shaking loose the politics obstructing the battle over the budget.

Kerry’s full slate of hearings before Congress this week reflects how the Obama administration has kept the lead on many national security crises in the hands of the State Department. Increasingly, policymakers and military leaders are repeating the refrain “there is no military solution” to the world’s conflicts. On Monday after a high-level war council meeting on the Islamic State strategy in Kuwait, newly minted Defense Secretary Ash Carter said more emphasis needs to be put on the diplomatic side of that operation.

“We ask for 1 percent of the federal budget. One percent of the total budget of the United States of America goes into everything we do abroad,” Kerry said in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations committee Tuesday afternoon. “Well more than 50 percent of the history of this era will be written off that 1 percent and things we choose to do or not do.”

As he said in prior testimony Tuesday, “America must lead, but we cannot do so on the cheap.”

Kerry’s plea for more than 1 percent is a nearly 15-year-old talking point for the non-military foreign policy community, over a period where defense spending has reached record heights. The diplomatic corps have long complained how little of the federal budget goes to the State Department and USAID though they are bearing the weight of the administration's national security strategy -- and for just as long their funding has been a favorite punching bag of politicians. Not for hawkish Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, who told Defense One after his first hearing Tuesday morning: "You really mess with this budget now at your own peril, given the way the world is."

“I hope there's an appreciation that this account funds the entire State Department -- their embassy security, infrastructure -- and that these programs outside of lethal force can make a difference,” Graham said.

Of the $4 trillion fiscal 2016 budget requested by President Obama, the Pentagon would get $585 billion, with $534 in base budget and $50.9 billion for the war money known as Overseas Contingency Operations, or OCO, which is not subject to budget caps. By comparison, according to Kerry, $50.3 billion in discretionary funding would go to the State Department and USAID, with $7 billion for OCO. Some $3.5 billion would go toward the Islamic State fight -- not only for countering the group, but also for bolstering security and responding to the humanitarian crises created in part by the civil war in Syria.

But defense leaders wanting robust, unfettered funding have had little luck overcoming politics in recent years.

Congress is embroiled this week in a separate funding fight over the Department of Homeland Security, whose appropriations run out on Friday. Each party is accusing the other of holding the nation’s defense hostage to score political points on immigration. That DHS fight over border security follows two years of political battles that also ignored the Pentagon’s warnings that congressional infighting over sequestration spending caps would harm national security. The administration has defiantly submitted a fiscal 2016 budget some $30 billion over the budget caps, which officials acknowledge was intended to force the issue.

Even as the State Department takes the lead in the Islamic State fight, with backing from the Pentagon, its budget remains a vulnerable political target. On the opposite end from senators like Graham sits Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has previously stated that the U.S. should stop all foreign aid altogether.

Kerry made his case: “After serving in public life for over three decades, I am aware that there are few more reliable -- or damaging -- applause lines than promising to slash the budgets of the State Department and USAID.”

The former Massachusetts senator, who was serving when the sequestration trigger was put into place, said, “I didn’t like it then, I don’t like it now.”

“It is depriving the United States of America, the most powerful country on the face of the planet and the world’s richest nation, and it is institutionalizing the notion that Congress is either unwilling or incapable of making a decision.”

The number of questions put to Kerry on the Islamic State operation alone reflects the importance lawmakers place on that crisis, and the secretary’s role in managing it. Kerry’s prior testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in December served as the foundation for the White House draft for an authorization for the use of military force, or AUMF, against the Islamic State, and senators used his appearances Tuesday to clarify the administration’s strategy.