Breaking Down the Congressional Defense Budget Process

Show Notes

The congressional defense budget process will be heating up over the next few weeks. To understand what we should expect for defense funding in the fiscal year 2022, Ken Miller talks with Madison Strader Arcangeli and Katy Nazaretova of Forza DC, a federal strategies and consulting firm that helps organizations engage with Capitol Hill over defense, technology, and cyber security issues. Madison and Katy break down the National Defense Authorization Act and Defense Appropriations Bill, explaining how these bills differ from each other and what each bill covers. We also discuss the big-ticket items the defense budget committee will grapple with, how congressional staff will navigate the political dance of defense bills, and what the future holds for the responsible defense budgets.

 

To learn more about today’s topics or to stay updated on EMSO and EW developments, visit our homepage.

Creators & Guests

Host

Ken Miller

AOC Director of Advocacy & Outreach, Host of @AOCrows From the Crows' Nest Podcast

Producer

Laura Krebs

Editor

Reese Clutter

What is From the Crows' Nest?

This podcast features interviews, analysis, and discussions covering leading issues of the day related to electromagnetic spectrum operations (EMSO). Topics include current events and news worldwide, US Congress and the annual defense budget, and military news from the US and allied countries. We also bring you closer to Association of Old Crow events and provide a forum to dive deeper into policy issues impacting our community.

Ken Miller (00:10):
Welcome to From the Crows Nest, a podcast on electromagnetic spectrum operations or EMSO. I'm your host, Ken Miller, director of advocacy and outreach for The Association of Old Crows. Thanks for listening. In today's episode, we take a closer look at the Congressional defense budget process that is set to heat up over the next few weeks as markups begin on the annual defense authorization and Defense Appropriations Bills. Truly though, the process has been going on for quite some time here over the spring and early summer, but it's getting more of the headlines here recently.

Ken Miller (00:42):
To help me with this somewhat esoteric topic at times, but one that is certainly very important, I'm joined by two guests from Forza DC, a woman-owned federal strategies and consulting firm. I am pleased to have with me, Miss Madison Arcangeli. She is co-founder and managing partner, and Miss Katy Nazaretova, the director of national security and technology policy. Before I introduce them, in the interest of full disclosure, Forza DC is a consultant of AOC. They are on board with AOC, helping us with our Congressional Education Program, so they have been very helpful here with us over the last several weeks. I wanted to have them on the show because they are in the prime position to really help us understand this process. Madison and Katy, it's great to have you on From the Crow's Nest. Thanks for joining me.

Madison Arcangeli (01:30):
Thanks so much for having us. We're happy to be here.

Ken Miller (01:33):
All right, to begin this conversation, just to kind of let our listeners know, could you let the listeners know a little bit about Forza DC and what your mission is, and a little bit about why you are engaged in this area of Congressional education and helping associations, like the AOC, engage Capitol Hill?

Madison Arcangeli (01:54):
Yeah, absolutely. I started Forza DC about a year and a half ago. We cover defense issues, technology issues, cybersecurity issues, anywhere from the defense space acquisition, down to military personnel policy. When I founded the company, it was really important to me to work on behalf of clients whose ideas I think are good ideas, and as a former Hill staffer, ideas that I would look at and say, "Yep, happy to support this. How can my boss be helpful?" Those are the people I want to work for today as Forza DC. That's how we've approached the company, how Katy and I both look at it.

Ken Miller (02:35):
We actually came to get to know each other through common colleagues that we associate with, but I've known Katy now for quite some time actually, from her previous stint with Congressman Rick Larsen, who many of our listeners will know about the Congressional EW Working Group on the Hill. I've had the privilege to work with Katy, so it's great to have you both on the show. I can't think of two better people to kind of help us walk through, not just this topic of the defense budget, but also from the perspective of electronic warfare and this capability area, because you both are very familiar with this, so I appreciate you being on here.

Ken Miller (03:12):
Just to get started, AOC has been engaged with Congressional education for some time. It's ebbed and flowed over the years. Sometimes it heats up, sometimes it's left to some of the senior leaders on the Hill to carry. But I wanted to talk a little bit about why, for electronic warfare, especially, it's so important that our community really understand what's going on with the Congressional defense budget process on an annual basis because a lot of times it's not in the headlines, but we are significantly affected by what goes on over these next few weeks. I wanted to get your take on why engaging in this education awareness for EW is so important.

Katy Nazaretova (03:55):
Great, I can kind of take that one. I think the hardest thing with EW, especially for example, a Congressional staffer, but I think also anyone dealing with the funding lines, is that unlike a lot of other items, it's not just one or two buckets that you fund that you can just tell Congress, "Please support this." There's various spending lines all across the department, all across the services. For Congressional staffers, education is so helpful to know why is this important. First of all, what is EW?

Katy Nazaretova (04:32):
A lot of these staffers are relatively young professionals starting out and getting to know what EW is, why it's important, why it's important in DOD's transition to China as the pacing challenge, and why it's important in the fight in Ukraine, and why it's important in today's world with DOD and funding, and why it should be prioritized. I think the biggest issue for staffers, and speaking, myself, in the last few years, is identifying how to fund it, where to fund it, how to be most helpful because right now, it's just very hard to identify where it lives in the budget because it's everywhere. That's where AOC and where we come in as a resource for Congressional staff to point them in the right direction.

Ken Miller (05:35):
You mentioned young professionals. I came from Capitol Hill. I was on there 20 years ago. When my boss was first appointed me to the Armed Services Committee, I thought I was going to do this great proactive thing and meet with the Chief of Staff or the Staff Director of the HASC. Met with him and was like, "Okay, what do we do on this committee? What is our roles and responsibilities?" And he takes this huge book, and this is before internet and all this stuff was online. It was just a printed book of 1500 pages, and he just picks it up and he just throws it at me. It lands like right on the couches. "That's what we do."

Ken Miller (06:15):
I was overwhelmed because, "Oh my God. How am I going to understand this 1500 page book?" And then you start to leaf through it. There's an order to it, but it's not easy to pick up right off the bat. From that point in time, it's been very important to just try to take time to learn this stuff. That's why we wanted to talk about this. To get into this a little bit, and we have a lot of ground to cover, so we'll skip over a few things and then hopefully be able to circle back, but I think it's very important at the beginning to lay out ... For the defense budget, especially, what we hear about is we hear about the National Defense Authorization Bill and the Defense Appropriations Bill.

Ken Miller (06:59):
These are two separate bills, but for every spending item that comes through Congress, you don't always hear about these competing authorization and appropriations process. They are there for everything, but for the defense bill, which is, I guess, the largest pot of discretionary spending that Congress can affect, they have an annual authorization process and an annual appropriations process. These two move simultaneously and somehow end up at the same point. Could you talk a little bit about these two bills? How are they separate, for the listener out there who's not familiar when we talk defense budget, these two bills and what they are both covering?

Madison Arcangeli (07:44):
Yeah, and I'll break it down in a really easy to understand way, and Ken you've heard me say this before. If you were to go to the movies and you're still a kid, you go and ask dad, "Dad, can I go to the movies?" Dad says yes. That's an authorization, but then he says, "Go ask your mother for the money," so you say, "Okay, yes. I have one yes." I go over to Mom to ask for the money and she says, "Yes, here's the money." She has just appropriated the money. She's the appropriator. In that case, you get to go to the movies, but if Dad had said yes and Mom had said no, you don't get any money. You don't get to go to the movies. That is a very simple way of explaining the difference between the two authorizing bills.

Madison Arcangeli (08:31):
The NDAA, National Defense Authorization Act, establishes policy for the Department of Defense. They can control what the department is spending money on, what they're not spending money on. They can put fences around funding to say, "You can only spend it if you get to this certain threshold or you do this certain thing," whereas appropriators can say, "Here's the money." Now you actually have it to go and execute on this thing that the authorizers told you to do. They work really closely together in establishing what are those funding lines? What programs are they going to prioritize? What are they going to cut? There's some competition there because they are different committees, but they also work very closely together to make sure that there's some sense to what is coming out of Congress for the department.

Ken Miller (09:20):
That's a good analogy, and I won't complicate it further by introducing how my kids would handle this conversation, because then they'd figure out a way to still get the money and the authorization without actually going through the right routes. All that to say is I think that's very important because when you hear these numbers tossed around by Congress, oftentimes, they are referring to one bill or the other and they don't always have to match up at the end of the day. Usually they're pretty close, but they're not necessarily identical. What happens when they're not identical? I mean, I know that sometimes there's empty authorizations or there's something's authorized at a level that it's not funded at, or sometimes there's certain language that will allow what's appropriated to kind of be authorized at that level. Could you talk about these bills, what it means when they're different for the particular program?

Madison Arcangeli (10:23):
Yeah, I mean, it can be complicated. If the appropriators put in more money than the authorizers do, then yippee for the department! That's a great thing for them because they now have more money to work with on that program. If they don't, it gets much more challenging. I think that just feeds in to further the instability of what is Congress going to fund stuff at? Are we going to do another CR or are we going to actually pass appropriations bills? One of the important things about the Armed Services Committees is the NDAA is, really, the primary authorization bill that passes every single year, and that's an unusual feat in Congress now. There are some authorization bills that happen every couple of years, but generally speaking, a lot of them have stopped doing it, which is one of the reasons the NDAA is such a critical bill. It actually moves. It also includes a lot of things that are defense, but also sometimes go beyond that too.

Ken Miller (11:24):
Yeah, and there are some agencies, not defense related, that their authorization bill hasn't passed for years and years and years. It's usually just some sort of general authorization is wrapped up in whatever's appropriated, or there's some other provision that's kind of allowing them to say, "Okay, you can still spend money," but there's not that oversight process. It is very important that that is done actually every year. I think Armed Services Committee really does have a very easy to understand process to their hearings throughout the year, where you kind of year in and year out, "Okay, here's what they're going to be looking at." So with that, like I said at the opening of the show, things are going to start to heat up a little bit, or have already been going, but they're in the headlines more. Could you talk a little bit about what your hearing in terms of the outlook here for markups and the bills coming to the floor?

Katy Nazaretova (12:19):
Yeah, so I can kind of take that one. Most of the markups, both for the National Defense Authorization Act and then the appropriation bills, are set to take place in June. That's going to include Subcommittee Marks, at least for the NDAA which are usually very fast, very non-controversial. Those are just very specific policies that are put out in each subcommittee. So the Cyber Subcommittee has their own mark. It usually lasts about 10 minutes and so on for all the other ones usually, and no amendments usually get introduced. They go by very quick and get adopted. Then about a week or two later, mid-June, is the Full Committee Mark. This is kind of the big, long, famous thing that goes on until it's done, essentially. This includes a ton of amendment, a ton of debate about big issues, and then sometime in the late morning, once you get to the end of debate and amendments, it's adopted, and then the next step is for floor action.

Ken Miller (13:23):
And as former staffers, I'm sure we all have kind of fun stories about what happens with these markups at midnight and 2:00 AM, and having to wake up your boss who's sleeping on the couch.

Katy Nazaretova (13:35):
Yeah. My first one, I was there until 7:00 in the morning the next day, so that was a fun first introduction to being a staffer for the NDAA.

Ken Miller (13:47):
And, really, the Full Committee Mark is where all the amendments from the committee are introduced and that's where all the big ticket items are talked about. That's where a lot of the debate happens that can really kind of set the course for what's going to happen on the floor, and so forth in the future. Before we get to the floor, though, what are you hearing? What are some of the big ticket items that the committee is really going to have to grapple with or is preparing to grapple with? Not necessarily where the committee is going to reside on the issues, but what are some of the big ticket items that really are going to take up some attention here in the next few weeks?

Katy Nazaretova (14:25):
Yeah, so a lot of the times you can kind of guess what these are going to be from what's making the news and what's happening in the world. I imagine Ukraine will come up. China always comes up. Main things that come up are also nuclear issues, right, from debates on the Armed Services Committee that you've seen in these last few months. You also have heard the vaccine mandate being a sicking point in the last few months. Nationally, you've heard about abortion, gun rights, inflation, so top line numbers. And then, a kind of bipartisan thing that gets talked about usually with amendments during the markup is increasing funding for cyber or AI or 5G capabilities. Also, for example, EW, non-traditional capabilities. Not ones that my old boss used to say you can just kick, but that we should be investing in to be competitive in the future.

Katy Nazaretova (15:29):
I mean, it's going to depend, also, in the next few weeks, if something comes up last minute, that might also end up being an amendment, but those, I would imagine, will probably make an appearance.

Madison Arcangeli (15:40):
I was just going to add amendments get done, issues get advanced or shot down, but it's also an opportunity for members to voice, to sort of position themselves politically on where they want to be on an issue. Sometimes, you will see amendments offered and then withdrawn simply because the member wants to make a statement on something that's important to them, and they don't actually want to have a vote on it for any reason. And then that's the end of it, but they got their opportunity to speak about it in a public forum, and as it relates to the defense bill.

Ken Miller (16:08):
A lot of times people will be like, "Well, why is such-and-such issue holding up the defense bill for my program," or whatever might be of interest to them. It's kind of what we talked about earlier is that this being the biggest authorization bill in terms of discretionary spending that Congress can affect, it, by nature, attracts just about every issue. It might seem like it's completely unrelated from a political sense. Obviously, DOD is the largest federal agency, so anything that can be affected within DOD and federal agency, federal employees, it tends to find its way into this bill, which makes it very complicated to kind of navigate through what we all think are the important issues of getting capabilities into the hands of war fighter.

Ken Miller (16:58):
Some of these other issues might seem not as relevant to the average audience but, obviously, this is the opportunity for Congress to affect it. How does the committee leadership on both sides navigate this so that it doesn't ... I mean, we've had a Defense Authorization Bill every single year for 60 years, I think now. I think we're going on for a long time, for decades. How do they navigate this every year?

Madison Arcangeli (17:29):
It is a political dance, right? There's a really strong desire within the Armed Services Committee to pass a bill. No one wants to mess around with National Defense. They all take their jobs very seriously. They know who they are there working on behalf of, and it's the US service member, and our National Security and, therefore, the entire safety of the country. They take that very seriously, so while there is an effort to appease members and bring member interests in so that they will support the bill, they're walking the fine line of what can we accept that will get this bill passed, and what can we not accept, because that's a bridge too far. You see both sides managing different components of their party to try to keep this bill in the middle so it will pass and all of the important policy that is contained in it gets made into law.

Ken Miller (18:24):
It is a very bipartisan effort bill. Usually, at the end of the day, I mean, it's overwhelmingly bipartisan.

Madison Arcangeli (18:32):
It is, and you see that. I mean, that starts from the top. The chairman and the ranking member, they both prioritize that. They prioritize working together. They're very strategic thinkers and they disagree on a lot of things, but there's also many things they agree on, and that's one of them.

Katy Nazaretova (18:47):
Also, the strategic push of you not wanting to be the year that doesn't pass it in the last 60 years. It's a lot of pressure.

Ken Miller (19:03):
So before we get to the floor, then, two more questions. One is Katy mentioned obviously, Ukraine will be a big ticket item. We've talked about Ukraine on the show. Obviously, Congress has appropriate a lot of emergency funding for Ukraine that is actually outside of the authorization process. It goes back to for years, we were doing this outside of the authorization process. For Iraq and Afghanistan, we would fund a bill, we would authorize certain things, but then there'd be that Emergency Wartimes/National Security funding that wasn't in the budget, but we still have to do. How do you anticipate the committee using this opportunity to say, "Okay, everything we've done is good. We've approved it, but we need to make sure that strategically moving forward, our capabilities, what we're investing in, are aligned with how we're going to be influencing or intervening in this region of the world," because in some ways what they're going to be considering is after the fact to all the money that's already been appropriated. How does that work in the HASC?

Katy Nazaretova (20:20):
Yeah, and I can take that. I mean, it's probably going to include a lot of oversight roles, a lot of what is going to happen with the allies that we work in. Especially within this administration and with this Congress, and the bills in the past, alliances have been a big staple of what is happening in Ukraine and what's happened in the last few months. I think how Congress and how the US government is going to track the spending that's happened, and going to see that it is going to the things that Congress intentionally appropriated for, I think that's probably going to live in this bill in some way or another.

Ken Miller (21:01):
So when the committee marks up the bill and it goes to the House floor, one of the questions that I always get every year is the bill comes to the House floor, or in the Senate floor. There's a House version and the Senate version, and they pass their respective chambers and then they meet in conference. But when the bill pass their respective committees and are marked up, there's report language. That report language has the effect of law in the sense of it can trigger certain actions, but the bill's not passed yet so you have legislative action and your legislative provisions and direct report language. Sometimes, it confuses a lot of people because it's like, "Well, is this a law or what is Congress asking?" Could you talk a little bit about you feel inspired someday to look up the bill and you have the bill in front of you. Tell the difference between direct report language and then legislative provision, what that means in terms of the process.

Madison Arcangeli (21:59):
Yeah, so like you said, report language ... As soon as the bill passes out of committee, and if it includes directive report language, that is report language. That is the Congress telling the department, "We are asking you to report on this thing," or sometimes it's not so direct. Sometimes it's a nudge or an encouragement, basically, to let the department know we're paying attention to this, but it's an opportunity for the committee and for Congress to shape what is happening in the department without passing a law telling them to do it. And sometimes, it's useful because they don't know what they want the law to say yet, but they know there's a problem, so they want the department to report back and say, "Here's what we found on this issue that will then, in subsequent years, shape potential bill language."

Katy Nazaretova (22:50):
I would say the biggest plus of report language is that once it's done, it's done. It doesn't have to go through the whole conference process. You know that what you've written at that moment is law, whereas bill language has to go through conference. Both Senate and House sit down and come to this agreement, and your language might be somewhat different or very different, or not make it into the bill in the first place. But with report language, even if it is not bill language, it's law.

Madison Arcangeli (23:26):
Just to expand off the conference process, but during the conference process Katy mentioned, things can come out. Things can be tweaked. Language comes out if it's in one bill and not the other bill. So if it's in the House version and not in the Senate version, then that's what's considered conferenceable, or if there's similar provisions, but it's just different enough, that can also be conferenced. Those are the things that are potentially vulnerable, that if they made it into one and someone hates it, they can spike it in the dead of night and it comes out. You don't know who did it, why it was done. As a House person. I always blame the Senate, but that's just me. That's how that process works a little bit more.

Ken Miller (24:12):
And that's why it's very important, when we get into Congressional education, to get staff kind of understanding what's in the bill and what is going on DOD earlier in the process, because then they can start to highlight some of these items before it gets to that point. Quite frankly, the conference process, it doesn't include everybody. It can, oftentimes, be done very quietly or with a small group of people appointed from the committee leadership. If they don't understand it, if they're not keyed into it, it might just slip out, and it is usually the Senate's fault. I agree with you Madison, let's be honest. I come from the House side as well.

Ken Miller (24:59):
It's important to get people to talk about this stuff as early as possible, so that it's easier, later in the process, to raise it as a concern to make sure that gets in there. You did get a little bit ahead of me, but that's okay because we're just having a good conversation here. But before we get to the conference, which is going to be very kind of interesting this year, when is it expected to be on the floor this year, both bills?

Madison Arcangeli (25:29):
In July. The date hasn't been set yet. It hasn't been noticed, but usually, in years past, it's a couple weeks after markup. There's a lot of back office that happens with a multi-thousand page bill that people just don't see, and Leg Council, those are the people who write the bill. They need time to put everything together again after it's been changed and amended in the markup, so sometime in July. Especially since it's an election year, there'll be a huge push to get it done before August because after August, Congress will really slow down.

Katy Nazaretova (26:02):
There's usually a push to do authorization before procreation. Sometimes that happens, sometimes it doesn't, but that, in general, is what folks try to do.

Ken Miller (26:14):
You mentioned it is going to slow down a little bit over August. Obviously, that's an annual thing, but then you have the election year. The fiscal year ends September 30th, so from your vantage point, and this is just from your engagements on the Hill, what is your expected outlook for these bills and the fiscal year? I mean, is there going to be a CR? What do we need to keep in mind as this process moves forward? When are we going to have a defense budget signed in the law, or hope to have one?

Katy Nazaretova (26:47):
I mean I will, again, echo my past boss when I say no one ever wants a CR, whether it's Congress or especially DOD, whoever else. CR is not what folks are working towards. However, the big thing to consider this year is that the appropriation bill that was signed into law for this year was very late. It was signed into law, essentially, at the beginning of the year. I would say a lot of the issues that folks had then, I doubt have been resolved, so those will probably kind of seep into this year.

Katy Nazaretova (27:22):
However, the big caveat is that people will want to kind of get all of this over with before August so that these issues don't creep up on them when they are going to their districts to campaign in October. They will want to kind of control their headlines, for the lack of better words. As excited as people are to kind of get this done, as they are every year, it'll depend on what the big sticking points are. Sometimes, the sticking points are easier to come to an agreement on and a compromise, and sometimes they're not. It'll just kind of be up to that.

Ken Miller (28:06):
So do you think that there definitely will be a CR, though? I mean, will there be enough time, after August recess and before the election coming up, for substantive work to be done out in the open?

Katy Nazaretova (28:19):
I mean, I would say it all depends. If they're able to pass these bills out on the floor, if both Senate and House are able to do that prior to August, and they're able to go into conference prior to August, then they have quite a bit of time. This last year, just how it was, I think at least for NDAA, appropriations, I don't think Senate ever passed some of the bills on the floor at all, so I think conference was just very, very short. Then, it's just staff kind of bending over backwards to try to come to an agreement on two, pretty different bills. I think there a CR is less likely if they're able to do this before August, but again, things change here at a drop of a hat, so I can't say ever for sure.

Madison Arcangeli (29:11):
Yeah. I agree with Katy. See, I may be more pessimistic. I think a CR is probably more likely than not, but there is time, right? There is time for them to get it all done, even though they will be out in August and October. That's still time to do it. They just need to move.

Katy Nazaretova (29:30):
And that essentially ... I think what people, a lot of times, don't understand is even if the members aren't voting, the staff are very much still working.

Madison Arcangeli (29:38):
Yeah.

Katy Nazaretova (29:39):
They're not on vacation, really, ever. So for conference, I mean, staff are working around the clock until their issues get resolved.

Ken Miller (29:51):
Obviously I'm going to have you back on once we kind of get through some of these markups and hearings to kind of talk a little bit more about what's in the budget, what's in the bills that Congress passed and what did Congress say about some of the technologies and capabilities that are important to the EW community. Right now, it's just in the President's budget and there's not a lot of talk yet, but we'll have you back on in a couple months. But just to kind of put a bow on some of this discussion, I want to talk a little bit about some of the trends. Katy mentioned earlier, as one of the big ticket items, the increasing defense budget with inflation. But obviously, this is not a new discussion. What should the top line of defense spending be? How should it grow in comparison to our GDP and so forth.

Ken Miller (30:41):
I wanted to get your thoughts on some of the trends about where you see Congress going, particularly with increasing defense budgets and then kind of this use of supplemental funding, this off-budget stuff, which really kind of started heavily when I was on the Hill back in 2001, 2002 timeframe, with Afghanistan and Iraq, but really then exploded almost to a point of being misused for quite some time. Went away, and then now, not that it's coming back yet, but there is that element of how do you control defense spending, or how do you manage it, I should say, in light of some of these process issues with supplemental funding and, of course, wanting to go for a top line level?

Madison Arcangeli (31:29):
Yeah. I mean, I'll start with and I will caveat that I agree with the position that my old boss has taken. The Department of Defense needs to spend their money smarter, and there's better ways to do some of the things that they're doing with the money that they already have. I think the world is changing. Threats are changing, and evaluating what exactly do we actually need to meet those threats is a really hard conversation to have, both from It's changing and we have to figure it out, but also from a perspective of there's a lot of politics at play in that conversation, as well. The phrase I have heard is the facts are interesting and unimportant sometimes, and it's true any time you're talking about politics.

Madison Arcangeli (32:16):
I think we'll continue to see the defense budget grow. There's a strong push for that, certainly on the Republican side of the aisle, but also from some Democrats as well. We saw that with the defense bill last year. There was a huge plus up, which actually benefited a lot of programs that needed the money, so I think we're going to continue to see that. And before I let Katy chime in, I will just add on supplemental. I think when a cash infusion is needed, it's really important, but it also makes it really hard to plan. It makes it hard for department to plan in the long run, if that's what they're dependent on to get funding. I don't think that helps National Security to be flying by the seat of our pants, to be throwing money at things as it comes, rather than investing in the long term, looking ahead.

Ken Miller (33:05):
From an EW perspective, in the past, we've had these episodic investments in EW, and a lot of it's been through quick reaction or something that's been through supplemental funding, wartime funding. It looks good on paper, but you don't always get the best solution in the field. That's true with almost any capability when you go outside of this kind of very intentional process of oversight and authorization that happens with Congress, where you can kind of step back and say, "Okay, how are we doing long term over the course of future years?"

Ken Miller (33:39):
Like you said, it's good for when you have an emergency, but you can get reliant on that really easily, particularly when there's a crisis out there. I think, sometimes, we just assume that, "Oh, we're passing them." We're getting the money for the movie from our parent, going back to your analogy. That's great. That only can really go so far because that's not the best way to do it. How do we get back to kind of a more responsible budgeting process, overall, in terms of how we manage this year-long annual process, and all the various competing interests that go into it?

Katy Nazaretova (34:23):
I mean, I would say that the biggest thing is kind of what AOC is doing on EW, education. Because as past staffers, we all know that, especially as a house staffer, you are not just handling defense. You're handling 10 other issues, as well. So for one person to really, really know every facet of the defense budget is impossible. For organizations like AOC to come and educate staffers who have a hand in defense policy, especially EW policy, and telling them, "This is what this is. These are the programs that are important to fund." So once you are making that ask of the DOD, once you are crafting these bills, these are the things that you should be looking at. I think if staffers have more access to organizations like that they can resource and really trust, then that will make their lives infinitely easier.

Madison Arcangeli (35:23):
I would also add, stepping back farther, it's a bigger problem across Congress that really gets fixed by looking at gerrymandering ,and looking at how are these districts made up so that members are representing districts that are much more bipartisan, much more diverse in terms of Democrats versus Republicans, of looking at that's how you put people into the middle so that they actually have to talk to one another. But if they represent a district that is really strongly blue or really strongly red, there's no incentive. They want to get reelected and in that way, they're representing their constituents and that's exactly what they should be doing. But if they have a more bipartisan district, it sort of pushes everyone into the mill to then have these difficult conversations, and come to some sort of a normal budget process that we have not seen for quite some time.

Ken Miller (36:15):
That's an interesting point, and obviously with the election coming up, I mean, we're seeing it kind of real-time happening. There's a lot of question marks about what will be the resolution this year, because this election is coming up and sides have already been drawn, quite frankly, in terms of where certain bills are going to go or how that process is going to go, in anticipation of what the outcome of November's going to be. This goes back to something that really bothered me since my time on the Hill ... I did an article for one of our newsletters, I guess, last year or two years ago, looking at the historical record of when we've finally gotten the defense bill passed. It's always been a bipartisan bill.

Ken Miller (37:04):
When I was on the Hill, it was always done by mid-September, both bills. It gradually started getting later and later and later, and now, over the past five years, it's just December. Now, it's kind of like, "Okay, yeah, we'll get it done by December." Sounds great because that's the end of the calendar year, but the fiscal year started October 1st. From my vantage point, when you talk about this political environment on Capitol Hill, it's become so red and so blue that there's not that resolve to actually come together prior to a self-imposed kind of crisis of deadlines. We start to lose that. It gets pushed further later in the year, and I think that we have to figure out a way to get that back in and respect the fiscal year calendar because programs depend on that when you're looking out future years and so forth, and there's cascading effects that I just don't think we pay enough attention to.

Ken Miller (37:59):
That's my own personal view on it, and I agree that we have to figure out a way to kind of bring that conversation back to the middle a little bit. So with that, I look forward to having you back on here. Obviously, probably sometime in July or August when we can kind of take a step back, look at the bill and kind of figure out where some of the program funding is, but I do want to thank you for taking time and talking a little bit about this process that we're going to hear a lot more about over the next couple weeks. Thank you for joining me on here, From the Crow's Nest. It was great to have you.

Madison Arcangeli (38:29):
It was great being here.

Katy Nazaretova (38:30):
Yeah.

Madison Arcangeli (38:30):
Thank you for having us.

Katy Nazaretova (38:31):
Thanks.

Ken Miller (38:31):
Well, that will conclude this episode of From the Crow's Nest. I'd like to thank my guests, Miss Madison Arcangeli and Miss Katy Nazaretova, for joining me to talk about this important topic of the Congressional Defense Budget. I also want to draw your attention to our sister podcast, The History of Crows, which chronicles the history of electromagnetic warfare from the earliest inventors and operations, to present day. As always, our audience is important to us. We're always looking for ways to improve our show, so please take some time to rate us and comment. You can also contact us by visiting our website at crows.org/podcast. Thank you for listening.